The assortment of black dots that decorate African penguins’ mostly all-white fronts might help the birds tell each other apart. This is the first documented time that animal behaviorists and psychologists have pinpointed a physical feature that a bird species uses for visual recognition. The findings are described in a study published in the January 2024 issue of the journal Animal Behaviour.

[Related: How African penguins continue to survive changes in climate.]

In birds, distinguishing individual flock members is primarily based on auditory cues and not visual cues. For example, some parrots distinguish their offspring with squawking equivalent of individual names. This new research is one of the first studies to show that birds could use visual cues more than scientists previously believed. 

According to study co-author and animal psychologist Luigi Baciadonna, the dots on African penguins appear when they are about three to five months old. These birds molt annually and reemerge in the same position when the new plumage comes in. 

In the new study, a team from Italy’s University of Turin, the University of Oulu in Finland, and Zoomarine Italia marine park near Rome conducted a simple experiment with 12 penguins. The team built a small enclosure with plywood walls that was just tall enough to prevent a penguin from seeing over it. They placed cameras on either end of the pen and life-size pictures of two penguins on one of the far walls. One penguin entered the enclosure, where one of the pictures featured its specific mate. 

African penguins form lifelong bonds with their partners and the team tracked their responses to images of other penguins from their species. They found that the penguins spent more time looking at the picture of their partner than they did a picture of a different familiar penguin. This occurred even when the heads of the penguins were blurred. 

When the test penguins were shown two images of their partner, including one that had the spots removed, they preferred the images where the dots remained intact. However, this preference for their partner did not occur when the birds saw unspeckled versions of their mate and a different bird. According to the team, this suggests that the penguins use these spots to tell one another apart.

[Related: Jackass penguins talk like people.]

African penguins live along the coasts of Namibia and South Africa. They are about 24 to 27 inches tall and eat squid, anchovies, and other small fish. African penguins are known to be particularly communicative with one another, so scientists have studied their behavior to better understand some of the more advanced social behaviors seen in primates. A 2021 study found that African penguins are capable of vocal accommodation. Different group members have a different dialect and vocal accommodation allows group members to learn to speak more like the others. 

“Given how goofy penguins can seem–almost stumbling over their feet as they walk, for example–the birds may not seem like they are all that bright,” Baciadonna told New Scientist. “But we showed in these two or three experiments that actually they are quite complicated and complex. They’re also clever.”

Animal physiologist and director of the Institute of Neurobiology at the University of Tübingen Andreas Nieder told Science, “It is an original study with a remarkable finding.” Nieder was not involved in the new research.

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This article was originally featured on Undark.

Twice each year, members of a subspecies of red knots—salmon-colored sandpipers—migrate thousands of miles between their wintering grounds in northern Mexico and breeding sites in the Arctic tundra, encountering myriad obstacles along the way. Thought to migrate during both day and night, brightly lit cities likely disrupt their nighttime journeys, and rising sea levels and invasive species threaten the wetlands they rely on for refueling at stopover sites.

The red knot is one of some 350 North American bird species that migrate. Yet there remains much to learn about the details of their journeys. It’s a critical information gap given the loss of an estimated 3 billion birds in North America since 1970, according to a 2019 study.

“The only way to think about conservation of migratory birds is to consider their full annual cycles,” including their migration routes and wintering sites, said Bill DeLuca, a senior migration ecologist with the National Audubon Society.

The problem, he said, is “We don’t know, for a lot of species, what time of the year is causing the declines.” For the vast majority of migrating birds, the full picture of their life cycle is incomplete, DeLuca added.

That’s partly due to technology. Until recently, while scientists could study birds at their North American breeding sites, they had few ways to track them individually throughout their migrations or while in their wintering grounds, especially small songbirds like warblers and sparrows.

And for birds that migrate through the West’s remote deserts and mountains and across its wild shorelines, like the rufous hummingbird, which journeys between Alaska and the Pacific Northwest and Mexico, their flight routes are even less understood. “Knowledge of migration patterns for birds in the West is way behind the East,” said Mary Whitfield, research director at the California nonprofit Southern Sierra Research Station, because of the smaller number of long-term banding stations there.

But scientists across the West are increasingly turning to an accessible, low-cost technology to answer key questions about bird migration and how climate change is impacting their life cycles.

The Motus Wildlife Tracking System, launched in 2014, is an international network of about 1,800 radio receiver stations in 34 countries. The program, run by the conservation organization Birds Canada, is already well established in eastern North America, but has begun to spread rapidly across the West in the last couple of years. Researchers in the Motus network track birds (or other animals, like butterflies) using small tags. When a bird flies within range of a station—up to about 12 miles away, depending on the conditions—the tag automatically transmits a signal to a receiver, which is then uploaded to the Motus website. Scientists participate through tagging, building Motus stations, or both, and fund their own projects. Museums, zoos, and schools may also participate by hosting a Motus station and educating the public about bird migration and movement, Whitfield noted. So far, more than 43,600 animals, including butterflies, bats, and birds, have been tagged by researchers using Motus globally.

Until recently, tracking tags were too large and heavy for small songbirds. The Motus system uses tags that weigh less than 3 percent of a bird’s weight—in the case of a small songbird that weighs around 18 grams, a tag weighs just half a gram. After birds are captured in mist nets made of fine mesh, they are fitted with the tags using a harness, which they wear like a backpack.

An estimated 1 billion birds use the Pacific flyway, a route through Western coastal states, during their migration, and many millions more migrate via the central flyway through the interior West. Along the way, they routinely encounter natural phenomena like storms, drought, and predators, as well as man-made obstacles like glass-facades that attract birds and pose serious collision risks. In addition, given the rapid growth of wind and solar projects across the West, Whitfield said, it’s crucial to identify birds’ movements through desert areas earmarked for alternative energy development.

According to Whitfield, Motus (Latin for motion) could be a “game changer” for understanding Western birds’ movements through the seasons. “It’s critical,” Whitfield said. “We have to find out more about migration, because it’s definitely a pinch point for bird mortality—that’s typically when birds die the most, because it’s just a really perilous journey.”

In May of this year at the Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico, Matt Webb, an avian ecologist with the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies, was getting ready to install a Motus radio tower with funding from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He hoped to fill “in some of the knowledge gaps” about grassland songbirds, which are experiencing rapid declines in population. Four species in particular have declined more than 70 percent since 1970, according to the bird conservation network Partners in Flight.

Grassland birds range from the prairies of Saskatchewan to the southernmost edges of the Chihuahuan desert in Mexico. “We’ve got this massive geography that we need to cover adequately” to understand their migration, Webb said.

And the birds don’t just travel during migration, he added—they roam widely during both the breeding season and winter, making them even more difficult to monitor. With data from Motus, Webb said, they hope to “unravel some of those mysteries of why they’re moving around and where they’re going during those seasons.”

Webb was equipped with several long antennas and a shoebox-sized, solar-powered sensor station computer with cellular connectivity for receiving and transmitting data. But the road to the tower site was flooded, after increased snowpack drove high flows in the Rio Grande River.

So Webb and Kylie Lamoree, another Bird Conservancy ecologist, turned to Plan B, surveying old water and communications towers as potential locations. In order to detect tagged birds up to 12 miles away, “We need to get it up above the topography and the vegetation nearby,” Webb said. (He later noted that they were able to go back at the end of August and install the station.)

At the northern end of the Chihuahuan desert, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge is a major destination for migrating and wintering waterfowl as well as for birders. Webb was seeking to determine if the four grassland birds he’s studying—thick-billed longspurs, chestnut-colored longspurs, Baird’s sparrows, and Sprague’s pipits—are using the refuge during the winter, during migration, or both.

Those four species are small songbirds with ochre, tan, or black plumage that make them well-camouflaged in shortgrass prairie habitat. The birds are difficult to capture for tagging without large vegetation to conceal the researchers’ mist nets, Webb said.

Even so, Webb said the payoff is great: “There’s really never been a technology that works well enough to be able to collect this data” for such tiny birds, he said. And after a bird is tagged with its transmitter “backpack,” it doesn’t need to be recaptured.

Migrating shorebirds are another group of Western birds with steep population losses in recent decades. Julián Garcia Walther, a Mexican biologist and Ph.D. student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is monitoring shorebirds in northwest Mexico to find out more about climate change impacts on sea level rise and biodiversity. “I started thinking about how these birds that live on the interface between land and sea, the intertidal zone, how they’re going to be affected by sea level rise,” Garcia Walther said.

He learned about Motus in 2019, and realized the small tags used in the network were ideal for monitoring red knots, many of which winter in the coastal wetlands of northwest Mexico and whose populations are under pressure. But there were no Motus stations in the region.

Garcia Walther has now installed about 25 Motus stations with the help of the Mexican conservation organization Pronatura Noroeste, where he is the Motus network coordinator, along with other partner organizations. “It’s a big learning curve,” he said, requiring skills in electricity, radio communications, and construction. One of his biggest challenges is sourcing materials in Mexico, so he turned to improvised materials, like a pole once used for an osprey nest converted into an antenna mast.

Another hurdle was capturing the birds. Without tagged birds, stations are “just poles and antennas,” Garcia Walther said. Shorebirds are especially tricky to capture because they disperse across the coastline’s open expanses. While the harness method used for tagging grassland birds is also often used in shorebird research, Garcia Walther added, his team uses glue to secure the tags to the backs of red knots, meaning the birds will shed the devices when they molt.

But with three years of data from some 100 birds, Garcia’s team has made some significant observations. One finding, the result of data from Motus stations as well as GPS loggers—trackers that show fine-scale movements—revealed that during high spring tides, red knots use dried seagrass as rafts to rest on while the tidelands are inundated.

“This is analogous to what’s going to happen with sea-level rise,” Garcia Walther said. The data he has collected should help wildlife researchers plan for the future when there will likely be little shoreline available for roosting, he said, informing strategies to protect, restore, and improve vulnerable habitats.

Garcia Walther said he got advice from colleagues in the U.S. when he was setting up his stations, and he now helps scientists elsewhere in Latin America with their Motus projects.

Blake Barbaree, a senior ecologist at Point Blue Conservation Science with projects in California’s Central Valley, also depends on cross-border collaboration. His team is investigating the impact of drought on shorebirds, using Motus to track the movements of birds in California during the winter as well as during migration.

Since they’re only in the second season, Barbaree said it’s too soon to draw any definitive conclusions, though data collected at Motus towers has confirmed high connectivity between the Central Valley and coastal Washington, as well as the Copper River Delta in Alaska. “Numerous detections at Motus stations along the coasts of Oregon and British Columbia,” he wrote in a follow-up email, “have also highlighted the fact that a network of stopover sites is critical to their migration.”

This linkage, Barbaree said, helps researchers “piece together puzzles of population increases or decreases,” looking for impacts not just in wintering or breeding grounds but in key stopover habitats.

The network “has really opened up a world of migratory connectivity research” on other small animals like insects and bats, Barbaree added. And he’s seen it inspire collaboration between researchers investigating not just birds, but other migratory species.

Motus projects include studies on bats and insects, for example, with more than 340 species tagged to date. And scientists are turning to Motus for help identifying threats common to birds and bats. In 2023, a team from the U.S. Geological Survey installed two coastal Motus stations in California—with plans to install about two dozen more—to monitor three seabird species and three species of bats, to determine potential impacts of offshore energy.

After a major effort last winter to tag grassland birds in northern Mexico, Webb followed their migration north in the spring—via data their tags uploaded to the Motus website. A Baird’s sparrow his team tagged was tracked from Chihuahua to northern Kansas and up through North Dakota and Montana, the first time they had connected migratory stops through North American grassland habitats in such detail. It was “a lot of fun this spring watching the stations every morning,” he said.

DeLuca of the Audubon Society said understanding the life cycles of different species is the first step in revealing the factors causing their decline, like habitat loss or pollution. “When you think of all of the drivers that are pushing these species” towards extinction, he said, “it’s really kind of mind boggling.”

And climate change, he said, is an additional “huge over-arching pressure,” since it affects bird migration directly with impacts like increased severe weather, and indirectly when food resources like fruit or insects aren’t available.

Identifying the habitats birds rely on during migration and winter is key, DeLuca said.

And the Motus network can amplify those efforts.

The Motus philosophy is “all about collaboration,” Garcia Walther said. In addition to recording birds tagged by his own team, his Motus stations in Mexico are detecting birds from other research projects.

Once a tower is installed, any bird tagged by a Motus collaborator anywhere in the world can be detected there. “Any stations we place benefit the network as a whole,” Webb noted. And most of the data collected is publicly accessible on the Motus website.

The more the network grows, DeLuca said, “the more flexibility we have in terms of the kinds of questions we can answer with Motus.”

And with increased knowledge, scientists can better target conservation actions.

“The more we know, the more we realize just how dire the situation is,” DeLuca said. For migratory birds, he said, “The stakes, honestly, could not be higher.”

The post Tracking bird migration with radio-based technology appeared first on Popular Science.

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Bird photography is hard. It can require years of practice, expensive equipment, and endless patience. We don’t have any of those, so we really like the Bird Buddy, which puts a camera in a feeder that brings your avian models to you. Usually $279, this clever contraption is just $209 right now at Amazon for Black Friday—making it something for the birds, even if the discount is anything but. It’s a phenomenal gift and a gateway to a whole new hobby.

Bird Buddy Bird Feeder Camera $209 (was $279)

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The Bird Buddy took home the best overall title in our list of the best bird feeder cameras. Setup is simple: Just mount the feeder, connect it to the app, fill it with food, and get ready to observe some birds. The camera is smart so it can recognize what kind of feathered friends it sees while they feed. It will automatically capture images of the birds and catalog them so you can look at your avian visitors later. It can even send live alerts to your phone when birds arrive so you can watch in real-time.

Even if you’re not the biggest birding fan, this is a super cool way to see nature from an up-close view that would otherwise be impossible.

Once you’ve ordered your Bird Buddy, go check out our big list of the Best Black Friday deals to kill time before it arrives.

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Piping plovers are showing signs of recovery from major population losses in the state of Massachusetts. They’re listed as threatened in Massachusetts, due to habitat loss from increasing human impacts. According to Mass Audubon, they’ve identified roughly 1,145 breeding pairs nesting in the state this year. When the organization first started to monitor and protect the species in 1986, there were less than 200 breeding pairs in the Bay State. That’s a 500 percent increase in three decades.

[Related: Remembering Monty and Rose, the Chicago shorebirds that became the face of a movement.]

“While Piping Plovers remain a federally threatened species, this season’s data shows that these iconic birds are making real progress toward recovery in Massachusetts,” Mass Audubon officials wrote in a statement. “Massachusetts Piping Plover populations have recovered at a faster rate than those of most other states along the Atlantic Seaboard. As a result, approximately 50% of Piping Plovers worldwide now nest in Massachusetts. That makes coastal conservation even more important in our state—we’re responsible for safeguarding a huge portion of this threatened species’ worldwide population.”

Piping plovers are small migratory shorebirds that nest in sand and gravel beaches and mudflats across North America. There are three main populations of the endangered birds. One lives along the shores of the Great Lakes, one in the lakes and rivers of the Northern Great Plains, and another along the Atlantic coast. These roughly six to seven inch tall birds eat marine mollusks, beetles, worms, fly larvae, crustaceans, and other small marine animals. Piping plovers have a tendency to run for a short distance, stop, and then tilt forward to pull an insect or worm up from the sand. Raccoons, skunks, and foxes are their primary natural predators. 

Their main threat is habitat loss. According to the US Fish & Wildlife Service, human development on beaches has reduced the amount of suitable areas for the birds to spend the winter months. Disturbance by humans and domestic animals like cats and dogs can also force migrating and wintering birds to expend unnecessary energy, which can lead breeding plovers to abandon their nests and young.

They have been listed as endangered or threatened since 1985 and piping plovers living in other states are also seeing some success and cautious optimism.  

In Maine, breeding pairs increased for the sixth consecutive year. Maine Audubon saw 157 breeding pairs in 2023, with some new nesting areas. However, the chick survival rate was the lowest since 2007.

[Related: Endangered sea turtles build hundreds of nests on the Outer Banks.]

“When monitoring an endangered species population, it is always good to proceed with caution. Despite an increase in our breeding pairs, the low fledge rate we saw this summer could be a cause for concern,” Maine Audubon wrote in a press release. “Piping Plovers migrate as far south as Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean for the winter, then have to make the trek all the way back up to Maine for the breeding season. A lot of variables are at play that are in nature’s hands during these long migrations.”

In the Midwest, 80 unique breeding pairs were counted across all five Great Lakes with a total of 85 nests. There are eight more pairs than 2022 and and the most since the species was first added to the federal Endangered Species List. Scientists with the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa in High Island, Michigan have been monitoring the island’s plovers as they nest and fledge for two decades. 

“This is the best year that we’ve had for monitoring as far as the total number of adults observed and the number of nests and chicks produced,” Bill Parsons, a scientist in the tribe’s natural resources department, told MLive in August. “We’ve definitely, over that 20 years, seen that the population is slowly, incrementally successful, but we’re nowhere near the target for rehabilitation of the population.”

Some general ways to help protect piping plovers include reporting nest locations to state or federal wildlife officials, keeping dogs on a leash during walks to protect nests, and leaving any driftwood or algae found on beaches for the birds. 

The post Piping plovers are in trouble, but there’s some good news appeared first on Popular Science.

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Hummingbirds are some of the world’s fastest birds and must frequently squeeze through tiny spaces in plants to get to the nectar that they need to keep up their energy. However, over time, they have lost their ability to fold their wings close to their bodies at the wrist and elbow like other birds. How hummingbirds squeeze into such tight spaces has remained a mystery to ornithologists until now. A study published November 9 in the Journal of Experimental Biology found that they deploy two very specific strategies: the sideways and the bullet.

[Related: This hybrid hummingbird’s colorful feathers are a genetic puzzle.]

Into the flight arena

The study focused on Anna’s hummingbirds (Calypte anna). These are among the most common hummingbirds living along the West Coast of the United States. They are about the size of a ping-pong ball and have iridescent emerald feathers and sparkling pink throat plumage. 

A team from the University of California, Berkeley designed a two-sided flight arena for the experiment. They used alternating rewards to train the hummingbird to fly through a 2.48 square inch gap in the partition that separated the two sides of the arena. To do so, they only refilled a feeder shaped like a flower with a sip of sugar water if the bird returned to the feeder that was on the other side through one of the gaps. This encouraged the birds with an only 4.7 inch-wide wingspan to flit around the arena. 

The team then replaced the gap between the two sides of the flight arena with a series of smaller oval and circular openings that ranged from 4.7 inches to only 2.3 inches in height, width, and diameter. The birds’ movements were recorded using high-speed cameras, to get a sense of how they negotiated the various openings. 

Next, the team wrote a computer program to methodically track the position of each bird’s bill as it approached and passed through each hole. The program also pinpointed where the hummingbird’s wing tips were, to calculate their wing positions as they transited through.

[Related: These female hummingbirds don flashy male feathers to avoid unwanted harassment.]

The experiment revealed that the hummingbirds used two unique strategies to negotiate the gaps. 

The sideways

In the first strategy, the hummingbirds approached the circular opening and usually hovered in front of it to assess its size. They then traveled through it sideways, reaching forward with one wing and sweeping the second wing back, similar to the shape of a cross. Their wings were still fluttering to fly through the door and then swiveled forward to continue on their way. 

The bullet

For the second strategy, the birds swept their wings backwards, pinning them to their bodies. They then quickly shot through the opening beak first like a bullet, before sweeping their wings forward. They resumed flapping their wings once they were safely through the circle. All of the hummingbirds in the study generally deployed this technique as they grew bolder and more familiar with the arena.

Changing tactics

The team observed that the hummingbirds who used the first strategy of sideways traveling tended to fly more cautiously than those that shot through the circles beak first. As the birds became more familiar with the openings after multiple approaches, they appeared to become more confident. They started to approach them quicker and dropped the more sideways way of getting through in favor of shooting through beak first. 

For the smallest opening–only half a wingspan wide–every bird zipped through facing forward with their wings back. Even the more cautious birds did this on their first attempt to avoid collisions. 

According to the team, about eight percent of the birds in the experiment clipped their wings as they passed through the partition and only one experienced a major collision. The bird who did experience the collision was able to successfully reattempting the move and continue flying.  

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Among birds, raptors are known for their sight, penguins for their huddling techniques, and some kingfishers are skillful divers. Some of these colorful and long-beaked birds dive headfirst into water to catch fish at break-neck speeds, all without damaging their brains. How they accomplish this feat is all in their genes, according to a study published October 24 in the journal Communications Biology.

[Related: Birds are so specialized to their homes, it shows in their bones.]

The special type of diving kingfishers perform is called plunge-diving. Other birds including gannets and pelicans also plunge-dive, but it is not a common foraging method in the animal kingdom. While kingfishers don’t generally hurt themselves on these dives that can reach up to 25 miles per hour, they do not come without risk. 

“For kingfishers to dive headfirst the way they do, they must have evolved other traits to keep them from hurting their brains,” Shannon Hackett, study co-author and associate curator of birds at the Field Museum, said in a statement.

Kingfishers are divided into three families that generally share vivid plumage and smaller feet. Kingfisher species also have varied diets. Not all of them eat fish, with many species eating lizards, insects, and even other kingfishers. After a 2017 study found that the groups of kingfishers that eat fish are not even closely related within the kingfisher family tree, it became clear to Hackett that fishy diets and diving abilities likely all evolved from a common ancestor.

“The fact that there are so many transitions to diving is what makes this group both fascinating and powerful, from a scientific research perspective,” says Hackett. “If a trait evolves a multitude of different times independently, that means you have power to find an overarching explanation for why that is.”

In the study, the team compared the DNA of 30 different kingfisher species to see which genes explain the birds’ diet and their ability to dive without sustaining brain damage. They used specimens from various field work.

“When our scientists do fieldwork, they take tissue samples from the bird specimens they collect, like pieces of muscle or liver. Those tissue samples are stored at the Field Museum, frozen in liquid nitrogen, to preserve the DNA,” study co-author and evolutionary biologist Chad Eliason said in a statement. 

They began the process of sequencing the full genomes for each of the kingfisher species, generating the entire genetic code of each bird. They then used software to compare the billions of base pairs that make up these genomes to look for the genetic variations that the diving kingfishers have in common.

[Related: What engineers learned about diving injuries by throwing dummies into a pool.]

They found that the fish-eating birds had several modified genes associated with both diet and brain structure. There were mutations in two interesting places. One mutation was on the birds’ AGT gene, which has been associated with dietary flexibility in other species. The other was on the MAPT gene, which codes for tau proteins that relate to feeding behavior.

Tau proteins help stabilize tiny structures inside the brain. However, the accumulation of too many tau proteins can be harmful. Traumatic brain injuries and Alzheimer’s disease in humans have been associated with a buildup of tau. 

“I learned a lot about tau protein when I was the concussion manager of my son’s hockey team,” said Hackett. “I started to wonder, why don’t kingfishers die because their brains turn to mush? There’s gotta be something they’re doing that protects them from the negative influences of repeatedly landing on their heads on the water’s surface.”

The team suspects that these tau proteins may be a mixed-bag for the brain. The same genes that keep the neurons in the brain organized are the same ones that fail from repeated concussions or if someone has Alzheimer’s.

“My guess is there’s some sort of strong selective pressure on those proteins to protect the birds’ brains in some way,” Hackett said. 

Some next steps for this research now that the correlated genomic variations have been identified include looking to see what these mutations do and to the proteins that are being produced. They’re also interested in what is going to compensate in a brain for all of the concussive forces and see how it can be applied to human brains.

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Best overall		Bird Buddy Smart Bird Feeder		SEE IT	The Bird Buddy offers stylish design, quality images, and a fun app with real-time notifications.
Best for hummingbirds		BirdDock Hummingbird Feeder Camera		SEE IT	The nectar attachment of this feeder can be swapped out to hold seed as well.
Best budget		WYZE Cam v3		SEE IT	This budget option lets you see the birds without any extras.

Bird feeder cameras make documenting our feathered friends fun and easy, but they aren’t created equally. Some are best for bird-watching in your own backyard, while others are better suited to remote locations. More expensive models have features like solar panels, video options, and smart bird identification, while basic, budget models make feeder photography accessible for just about everyone. No matter what you are looking for, the best bird feeder cameras will allow you to capture quality images of the birds who call your area home. 

• Best overall: Bird Buddy Smart Bird Feeder
• Best trail camera: TECHNAXX Full HD Birdcam TX-165
• Best for bird boxes: Hawk Eye HD Nature Cam
• Best for hummingbirds: BirdDock Hummingbird Feeder Camera
• Best for bird identification: Netvue Birdfy Pro
• Best budget: WYZE Cam v3

How we chose the best bird feeder cameras

There are dozens of bird feeder cameras on the market. Though many of them have the same basic features, they don’t all offer the same level of important features like durability, battery life, and accuracy of species detection. 

To arrive at our top picks, we relied on our own assessment of each device, including hands-on experience with multiple models. Because bird feeder cameras must be durable, weatherproof, and offer long-lasting performance, we also leaned heavily on user experiences and favored well-reviewed products. 

Features like accurate bird identification, solar panel availability, and useful accessories also helped push some models into the limelight. Other options like real-time notification and color night vision were nice to have but not essentials. Still, they didn’t tend to figure into our final decision simply because of their somewhat limited value for bird photography. 

The best bird feeder cameras: Reviews & Recommendations

Choosing a bird feeder camera can be tough. There are dozens of available models, and the prices can range from less than $50 all the way up to $400 or more. The key to finding the right bird feeder camera is not necessarily shopping by price but knowing which features are must-haves and which are not. Not everyone will benefit from AI, for example. You may even prefer to use your own knowledge to identify the birds in your photographs. Below are our favorite options, suitable for a range of situations and users. 

Best overall: Bird Buddy Smart Bird Feeder

SEE IT

Specs

• AI: Yes, identifies more than 1,000 bird species 
• App compatibility: Android and iOS
• Resolution: 5-megapixel photos, 720p video
• Battery: 4000 mAh rechargeable lithium-ion battery, optional solar panel

Pros

• Sharp images with a 120-degree field of view
• Weatherproof from -5°F to 120°F
• The smartphone app allows you to see feeders all over the world
• Compatible with an optional solar panel and lots of accessories
• Three mounting options

Cons

• No local storage, so it can’t be used without Wi-Fi
• Video resolution is lower than some competitors

The Bird Buddy bird feeder camera is relatively new, but it has much to offer, so it earns our top spot. The bird feeder is attractively designed, so it will look nice in your yard or on your deck with some solar lights, which is an important feature for many. It’s available in blue or vibrant yellow, so you can choose an option that fits your style best. I really enjoy the look of the blue Bird Buddy on the side of my porch, which is a big plus. 

The camera module is removable, which is important when it comes time to clean the feeder. It can take five-megapixel photos or offers 720p live-streamed video. The image quality won’t be that of your dedicated mirrorless or DSLR camera, but it is nicely detailed and properly exposed even in backlit situations. And being able to tune in to watch live as a bird chows down is pretty neat. 

The camera’s 120-degree field of view is wide enough to capture birds hanging out on the feeder’s side. You can also buy multiple accessories through Bird Buddy to extend the perch or feed different species. With the solar roof (the model we thoroughly tested and reviewed), you’ll never need to think about charging the camera. Without the solar roof, you’ll need to charge the camera every 5 to 15 days.

The Bird Buddy relies on AI to automatically recognize over 1,000 species of birds. The Bird Buddy app notifies you when you have new visitors to your feeder, which is always exciting. You can even browse other Bird Buddy devices all over the world to see species that you wouldn’t otherwise encounter. Plus, the images from your device contribute to migration information for conservation databases. You’ll be helping science progress while getting fun images of your feathered friends. 

Best trail camera: TECHNAXX Full HD Birdcam TX-165 

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Specs

• AI: None
• App compatibility: N/A, no app available
• Resolution: 8-megapixel photos, full HD 1080p video
• Battery: 4 AA batteries give it a working time of up to 6 months

Pros

• Sturdy trail-cam style feeder
• 6-month battery life
• Removable water basin means it can be a feeder or a birdbath
• Captures slow-motion video

Cons

• No smartphone app or bird identification features
• Memory card storage is less convenient than Wi-Fi or Bluetooth

This hybrid bird feeder camera is as tough as any trail camera. However, unlike most trail cameras, it can focus as close as 2 to 6 inches and offers a 100-degree field of view. This means you’ll get much better images of visiting birds than you would with a typical trail cam. The TX-165 takes standard AA batteries but has a working time of up to 6 months. You can leave it in a secure, remote location for a long time without worrying about the battery going flat.

The TX-165 also has a few features you won’t find on other bird feeder cameras. You can fill it with birdseed or fill the removable basin with water and turn it into a birdbath camera. It also takes impressive eight-megapixel images and full HD 1080p video. It’s also capable of 25 frames per second for slow-motion videos. 

Best for bird boxes: Hawk Eye HD Nature Cam

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Specs

• AI: None
• App compatibility: N/A, no app available
• Resolution: 700 tvl (television lines)
• Battery: None (includes a 75-foot power cable)

Pros

• Compact, so you can hide it almost anywhere
• Night vision lets you capture clear images in poor light 
• Durable and temperature-tolerant to between 35°F and 105°F

Cons

• Only shoots video 
• Not waterproof
• Needs to be plugged into a power supply

Birds do a lot more than just eat birdseed, so at some point, you might want to step up to a birdhouse camera. Because the Hawk Eye Nature Cam isn’t built into a feeder, it’s much more flexible than most bird cams. Its small size means you can put it anywhere—on treetops, fence posts, or even in animal burrows (though please exercise caution when putting it down a snake hole). Or it can be wired discreetly into a bird box for a 24/7 look at growing bird families, from egg to fledgling. 

The Hawk Eye Nature Cam is meant for live-streaming to your television set. The video resolution is clear and sharp, with 700 tvl (television lines) and 10 infrared diodes. This lets you view clear video even in the darkened environment of a typical bird box. Note, however, that you will need an RCA to USB adapter if you have a modern TV. 

The Hawk Eye does have a few drawbacks. It has no battery, so you’ll have to mess with a long extension cord to get it set up. It also isn’t waterproof. If you want to attach it to an unsheltered location, you’ll have to build waterproof housing or limit your use to dry weather. Finally, you can connect the camera to your PC and use additional software to grab photos and video segments from the live stream, but it’s not designed to capture high-resolution stills.

Best for hummingbirds: BirdDock Hummingbird Feeder Camera

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Specs

• AI: Yes, identifies species and alerts you when birds approach 
• App compatibility: Android and iOS
• Resolution: 2-megapixel photos, full HD 1080p video
• Battery: 6400 mAh rechargeable batteries provide 20 to 30 days of operating time 

Pros

• AI can recognize around 5,000 different species, including hummingbirds
• Rechargeable batteries provide 20 to 30 days of use
• Hummingbird attachment is removable

Con:

• Still photos are much lower resolution than those shot by similar feeders 
• The app is clunky and difficult to use

The BirdDock is a flexible bird feeder camera that isn’t limited to just capturing photos of seed-eaters. It also offers a removable hummingbird attachment featuring five flower-shaped feeding ports with 0.16-inch holes to keep bees and other insects out.  When you want to switch to photographing songbirds, you can remove the hummingbird feeder and fill the device with seeds. 

Like other AI feeders, the BirdDock will identify species and alert you when one is approaching the feeder. It has night vision, too, which could help you identify other critters that visit your feeder overnight. This bird feeder camera features a 160-degree field of view and can be used with or without an SD memory card. It provides an impressive battery life of up to 30 days. You can also purchase a separate solar panel to keep the device charged in sunny weather.

The BirdDock has two primary drawbacks: It captures still photos at a relatively low resolution of only two megapixels (though it does also capture full HD 1080p video). It also doesn’t have an especially user-friendly app. Some users complain that the bird identification feature isn’t accurate and that the app frequently disconnects from the camera.

Best for bird identification: Netvue Birdfy Pro

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Specs

• AI: Yes, identifies more than 6,000 different species 
• App compatibility: Android and iOS
• Resolution: Full HD 1080p video
• Battery: 5000 mAh rechargeable batteries 

Pros

• Can identify more than 6,000 different species 
• Long battery life (the manufacturer claims up to six months of use)
• Extra features like squirrel recognition and color night vision

Cons

• The bird identification service costs extra
• Storing photos on the cloud requires a subscription

The Netvue Birdfy rivals the Bird Buddy with features like ease of use, durability, and photo quality. It has an impressive array of extra features like color night vision. The AI can recognize squirrels, and the built-in microphone lets you yell at them when they’re caught robbing the feeder. You can also upgrade your feeder with add-ons like a solar panel, hummingbird feeder, and perch extension.

The Birdfy has the same features as most other feeders, including automatic capture/motion detection and real-time notification. It takes clear video at close range, provides a 135-degree field of view, and even offers 8x magnification if you want to study the fine details.

Birdfy has an impressive database of 6,000 species, though reviewers note that it isn’t always accurate. When it does misidentify a bird, you have the option to submit a report via the app. This is evidence that Netvue is constantly working to improve its software. 

The primary drawback of the Netvue bird feeder camera is you may have to pay for various subscriptions depending on what features you want access to. For example, if you want to take advantage of the bird identification feature, you must pay for a subscription. Likewise, a subscription is required if you want to store photos on the Netvue Cloud for longer than 30 days. 

Best budget: WYZE Cam v3

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Specs

• AI: No species identification
• App compatibility: Android and iOS
• Resolution: 1080p full HD video
• Battery: No battery

Pros

• Affordable
• Weatherproof 
• Compact for easy mounting

Cons

• Minimum focus distance is around 12 inches
• No battery; needs to be plugged into a power supply

Bird feeder cameras with all the bells and whistles can be expensive. A $200 feeder might be outside your budget, or you may not need all the features that expensive bird feeder cameras offer. The WYZE Cam v3 is essentially an outdoor security camera. You won’t be able to fill it with birdseed or attach a hummingbird accessory. But you can mount this sturdy little camera next to any commercial bird feeder or install it close to a high-traffic part of your backyard. 

The WYZE Cam v3 offers all the basic features you need in a bird cam. It’s weatherproof with an IP65 rating. It takes photos when it senses motion, and it has an app so you can see what’s happening outside in real-time. 

The WYZE Cam does have a few drawbacks. One of these is the focus distance. While most dedicated bird cams can focus on subjects as close as a few inches, the WYZE Cam isn’t designed for closeups. You’ll have to mount it at least a foot away from your feeder, meaning you won’t see a lot of detail in your photos. 

The WYZE Cam is also wired. It comes with a weatherproof six-foot USB cable, so you’ll have to install it close to your home. On the plus side, once installed, you won’t have to worry about changing or recharging the battery or losing your video stream on a cloudy day.

Things to consider before buying a bird feeder camera

If you love bird watching but don’t want to sit waiting with your binoculars, a bird feeder camera will allow you to capture photos and videos of birds even when you aren’t around.

A bird feeder camera is meant for permanent outdoor use. This means it needs features you probably don’t consider when shopping for other photography gear. Here are some of the most important things you’ll want to think about when shopping for a bird feeder camera.

Durability

Bird feeder cameras can be subject to some serious abuse. The sun’s UV rays and hot temperatures can degrade plastic casings over time. These devices must also withstand storms and sprinklers, remaining waterproof from season to season. Of course, they should also be tough enough to handle the beaks and claws of visiting critters—not just the birds they’re intended for but other potential visitors like squirrels and mice.

Image quality

The image quality of bird feeder cameras is dependent on a few things. Resolution is the first thing most think of, and indeed, it is important with these devices. If you want clear, sharp images, look for bird feeder cameras with higher resolution. These compact cameras won’t offer numbers you may be used to in smartphones or mirrorless cameras, though. Five to eight megapixels for stills and 1080p for video tend to be the highest available at the moment.  However, if you aren’t concerned with high levels of detail, you could save some money and opt for a device with a less impressive resolution. 

The second factor of image quality is close focusing distance. The majority of shots taken by a bird feeder camera will be up-close. As a result, look for a device capable of getting clear photos at a very short distance. Even as close as a few inches is ideal.  Finally, birds don’t tend to sit still for long. Because of this, the camera should be able to freeze action, even in low light conditions like early morning or cloudy days. 

WiFi connectivity

WiFi isn’t necessarily a critical feature, but it’s something to consider if you’re going to keep your feeder close to your house. Most people don’t want to trek outside daily to download photos or swap out a memory card. A WiFi connection will let you see what your camera captured at any time of day in any weather. Treating it like a smart-home device will save you from having to venture into the cold, heat, or rain unless you need to change the battery or add birdseed.

Pay attention to the range of the device, too. Shy birds won’t approach your device if it is too close to your home. If it’s too far away, you won’t be able to view your photos without exiting your home.

Mounting options

Each bird feeder camera will have somewhat different requirements for how you install them. Some require a pole, some can be mounted to a fence post, and others can be hung. Depending on where you want the feeder and what tools you have available for installation, some of these options may be better than others for your particular needs.

Battery life

Some bird feeder cameras take basic replaceable AA batteries; others rely on solar panels to power internal rechargeable batteries. Either way, you’ll want to pick a camera that isn’t power-hungry. A good battery will ensure you aren’t constantly changing batteries or missing photos because your camera goes dark on a cloudy day. 

Choosing a camera with motion detection is a good place to start. These cameras only activate when there’s something to take a photo of, which helps the battery last longer.

FAQs

Final thoughts on the best bird feeder cameras

• Best overall: Bird Buddy Smart Bird Feeder
• Best trail camera: TECHNAXX Full HD Birdcam TX-165
• Best for bird boxes: Hawk Eye HD Nature Cam
• Best for hummingbirds: BirdDock Hummingbird Feeder Camera
• Best for bird identification: Netvue Birdfy Pro
• Best budget: WYZE Cam v3

Once limited to nature photographers with long telephoto lenses and lots of patience, bird feeder cameras have made bird photography nearly effortless and available to almost anyone. That doesn’t necessarily mean any camera will do, though. Thinking about what you want to get out of your investment is an important first step in choosing a feeder. If you’re hoping to get up-close, detailed shots, pay attention to the example shots provided by the manufacturer and uploaded by users. Consider how important good battery life is to you, and ask yourself if you really need a camera that will identify already familiar local birds.

Why trust us

Popular Science started writing about technology more than 150 years ago. There was no such thing as “gadget writing” when we published our first issue in 1872, but if there was, our mission to demystify the world of innovation for everyday readers means we would have been all over it. Here in the present, PopSci is fully committed to helping readers navigate the increasingly intimidating array of devices on the market right now.

Our writers and editors have combined decades of experience covering and reviewing consumer electronics. We each have our own obsessive specialties—from high-end audio to video games to cameras and beyond—but when we’re reviewing devices outside of our immediate wheelhouses, we do our best to seek out trustworthy voices and opinions to help guide people to the very best recommendations. We know we don’t know everything, but we’re excited to live through the analysis paralysis that internet shopping can spur so readers don’t have to.

The post The best bird feeder cameras in 2023 appeared first on Popular Science.

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Bird watching seems like one of those rites of passage as you get older. You reach a certain age and boom—you suddenly like studying our avian amigos. I have, apparently, reached that age. But I don’t always have time to tromp through fields with binoculars to catch fleeting feathers. Luckily, bird watching these days is extremely easy thanks to the arrival of bird feeder cameras. These devices are built with compact, weather-resistant cameras that typically detect motion to snap photos and videos when a bird comes to feast. They provide close-up views of the snacking species that wouldn’t be possible any other way.

One of the more popular bird feeder cameras—Bird Buddy—was launched as a Kickstarter and has taken the world of bird feeder cameras by storm. It offers an attractive yet practical design and pairs with an easy- and fun-to-use app. The Bird Buddy camera allows you to capture high-quality photos and videos of birds that visit your feeder, and AI even identifies them for you. I’ve had one up for a few months to put it through its paces and have been impressed with the device.

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Overview

• The Bird Buddy is a modern-looking bird feeder with a removable camera that automatically snaps photos and videos of birds that come to snack. 
• The easy-to-use app notifies you when you have a visitor and automatically identifies over 1,000 species of birds.
• The feeder holds 3.5 cups of birdseed and comes with a scoop.
• It comes with a few different ways to mount the feeder. Additional accessories are available for purchase separately.
• A Bird Buddy Pro membership unlocks certain app features and higher video quality and costs $2.50 monthly for an annual membership or $2.99 for a monthly plan. 
• The base-level Bird Buddy costs $239, but we suggest upgrading to the version with a solar roof for unlimited battery life for $299.

Pros

• Attractive, modern design
• Very little assembly required
• Lots of accessories available
• App is easy and fun to use
• AI features automatically identify birds and other critters
• Livestream is available
• Records quality, highly-detailed photos and videos
• Holds plenty of birdseed
• Camera is removable for easy washing
• Optional solar roof does away with charging the battery
• Bird Buddy provides frequent updates

Cons

• Requires a WiFi connection
• Water pools in the bird feeder, resulting in moldy birdseed
• Some features are locked behind a subscription paywall

Verdict

The Bird Buddy is one of the best bird feeder cameras available thanks to its excellent app usability, advanced AI, and high-quality images and videos. The sleek design is easy to install, clean, and fill, and the removable camera is a nice addition. The reliance on WiFi won’t work for everyone, but smart-home devices are increasingly common, and it allows for immediate access to your camera’s feed.

Bird Buddy setup

Setting up the Bird Buddy involves two parts: Connecting to a WiFi router along with the app and physically installing the bird feeder. The Bird Buddy doesn’t offer any onboard storage, so you’ll need access to a WiFi connection to use the camera and AI features. It uses an 802.11 b/g/n connection at 2.4 GHz plus Bluetooth for connection to the app. You’ll want to install the Bird Buddy app and pair your camera to the app before installing the bird feeder in your yard. 

I had substantial issues pairing my Bird Buddy to my WiFi and connecting it to the app, and had to call customer support for assistance. Luckily, the customer support team was incredibly helpful and patient in working through the troubleshooting, and we eventually got it all set up. It is worth noting that I had an early model, so Bird Buddy has likely solved some of those issues to make the pairing process smoother.

Physical installation is simple, depending on how and where you place your bird feeder. You can hang it, mount it to a one-inch pole with the included bottom mount, or purchase a separate wall mount for attaching to fences or walls. The camera slots right into the designated slot, and it’s easy to plug it into the solar roof (if you opt for that). 

Bird Buddy design & build quality

The Bird Buddy bird feeder features a sleek, modern design with smooth curves. Though looks are subjective, I think it looks much more polished than other bird feeder cameras. It’s available in blue or vibrant yellow. Bird Buddy says it features a “bird-friendly design,” though it doesn’t specify what exactly that means. The perch features a raised bird footprint pattern, providing some grip for talons. 

The birdseed compartment—which holds 3.8 cups—is enclosed by clear plastic on both sides, allowing you and the birds to see the seed level inside. A back door at the top opens to fill the bird feeder up, though it requires careful maneuvering to get the seed inside and not spill it everywhere since it is a rather small opening. The entire back also comes off for easier cleaning. 

Bird feeders and bird feeder cameras are, naturally, outdoor items. As a result, they need to be durable, rugged, and built to withstand the elements. The Bird Buddy ticks those marks nicely. It is made of new and recycled BPA-free plastic and feels solid and sturdy. I have had it up for a handful of months, and after a quick cleaning, it looks brand new. That’s even despite the intense Florida sun constantly beating down on it.

Water issues

My main frustration with the design of the Bird Buddy is regarding keeping rain out. There are holes in the bottom that drain water in the event of rain, but they are extremely tiny. Of course, that keeps the small seeds from falling out. Butt hose same seeds can clog the holes, preventing thorough draining. Also, the protective roof helps keep some rain out but doesn’t extend beyond the feeder very much. If there is any wind blowing the rain, it will end up in the feeder. As a result, I had issues with water saturating the birdseed and mold forming. 

Granted, this may be a function of where I reside in Florida—a state where strong thunderstorms are a near-daily occurrence in the summer and humidity levels are intense. I had to change the birdseed every week because of the molding. Birds do not like moldy seeds, so I don’t get as many visitors. That’s especially true if I don’t stay on top of cleaning things out. It also means that I’m dumping out seed regularly and cleaning the feeder frequently. Neither of these is ideal and keeps birds away for longer. It may be less of an issue with different birdseed mixes or locations, but it has severely limited the number of birds I attract. 

Camera module details

The Bird Buddy’s camera is housed inside a plastic case. It is weather-resistant, though Bird Buddy doesn’t provide an IP rating. It does say that it can operate in temperatures between -5°F and 120°F. As a result, it will work in most locations throughout the year. The camera module measures 5.1 x 2 x 1.5 inches and fits securely in the bird feeder with the help of a magnet in the back.

The camera takes five-megapixel photos and 720p HD live-streamed video. It is capable of 1080p video clips, though you’ll need to pay for a Bird Buddy Pro membership ($2.50 per month for an annual membership or $2.99 per month for a monthly plan). The 120-degree field of view is wide enough to capture birds hanging out on the side of the feeder. There’s also a built-in microphone for recording bird songs as well, which is a fun addition.

Motion detection

Bird Buddy also built a laser motion detector into the camera. This senses movement on the perch and triggers the camera to take photos or videos when a visitor is present (much like a wireless security camera). I don’t have my bird feeder in a location where I can easily keep watch to test how well the motion detection works. But every time I heard a bird making noise, I received a “postcard” (Bird Buddy’s way of telling you a bird was at your feeder), so it seemed just sensitive enough.

You can switch to Power Saver Mode in the app settings if you want fewer notifications or conserve battery. Or turn on Frenzy Mode to see anything and everything, though you’ll have to pay for a Pro membership. 

Power

For power, the Bird Buddy camera utilizes a 4000 mAh rechargeable lithium-ion battery. Bird Buddy says it will last between five and 15 days. Of course, that depends on how many photos it takes, how much you stream live video, and the weather. When it needs a charge, it uses a USB-C cable. I was using the solar roof, which results in infinite battery life. If you want to save some money and don’t opt for the solar roof, the camera is fully removable. That means you won’t need to bring the entire bird feeder (along with any tiny creatures or germs) inside for charging.

Bird Buddy app

I’ve been very impressed with the Bird Buddy app during my testing. It is well-designed in design and usability, with many playful components. It is intuitive to use and easy to find what you need very quickly, even as you are getting used to it. It’s clean and minimal, without too many extra things going on.

The app uses AI to automatically identify over 1,000 species, which includes squirrels and rare birds. Unfortunately, I have only had Red-Winged Blackbirds at my feeder, so I haven’t been able to test how accurate the AI identification is beyond that single species. But it always got the Red-Winged Blackbird right, so there’s that. 

When a bird visits your feeder, the app notifies you with a “postcard.” These postcards are then saved to your gallery so you can pull them back up anytime. They can even show multiple photos or videos of the same bird if they stick around for a bit. Should there be photos in a set that aren’t worth saving, you can discard them to keep your gallery from getting too cluttered.

Your gallery is sorted by bird type. Tapping on each lets you open all photos and videos the camera has captured over time of that particular species. The page for each bird species will also provide information on that bird so that you can learn more. That includes personality type, what they eat, where they are typically found, how big they are, and what they sound like. For example, the Red-Winged Blackbird page tells me that they are brawlers, open lovebirds, and social butterflies who like to eat insects and seeds and are as big as a slice of pizza.

Community features

Beyond content from your feeder, you can see photos and videos from feeders worldwide in a few different ways. First, you can add some to your list of feeders and receive postcards from them like it is your own feeder. However, if you want to add more than one feeder for more than 72 hours, you’ll need a Pro membership.

If you don’t want to add a feeder, you can still scroll through photos and videos from the community. It’s like social media just for bird content. Birdbuddy TV is a video feed of publicly shared videos from Bird Buddy users. Or you can scroll through photos from the community, applauding people’s results. You can even help identify species by tapping the Wingbuddy link at the top of the Community page. 

Image & video quality

A bird feeder camera doesn’t do much good if the photos aren’t clear enough so you can actually see your avian visitors. The five-megapixel resolution may not seem very impressive, especially compared to smartphones and dedicated cameras. While you won’t be able to print these images to poster size by any means, the camera does offer plenty of quality for viewing on your phone. 

The images are clear and sharp, especially when the bird hangs out on the perch. The camera can’t focus much closer than that, though. My main visitor liked to sit right in the birdseed, so it was frequently out of focus, but even still, I could see good amounts of detail with vibrant colors. The auto exposure overall does great, even in extremely high-contrast lighting situations. There were times that the bird was blurry from moving during the exposure, but that wasn’t the norm. 

The Bird Buddy video quality is also really good. The footage is clear and well-exposed. If you want higher-quality video, you can upgrade to a Bird Buddy Pro membership, though I have not tested it, so I can’t comment on how much better that video looks. 

So, who should buy the Bird Buddy Smart Bird Feeder? 

Bird feeder cameras are becoming more and more popular, with new options seeming to pop up regularly. Spending $299 (for the solar roof version) may seem pricey for a bird feeder camera. But the Bird Buddy is priced similarly to other devices, including its closest competitor, the Netvue Birdfy Pro. So, what makes the Bird Buddy stand out? 

The Bird Buddy includes a durable yet attractive build, an integrated solar panel for infinite battery life, multiple mounting options, and an easy-to-clean design with a removable camera, which gives it the edge for most users. It’s also remarkably easy to install, with essentially no assembly beyond popping the camera into the feeder. Add to that the easy-to-use and fun app with minimal features behind a paywall, and it takes a clear lead. It’s a connected device that makes you feel a bit more connected with the natural world. If you are interested in keeping an eye on the bird species in your area, it’s hard to beat Bird Buddy. 

The post Bird Buddy Smart Bird Feeder review: A camera that’s not just for the birds appeared first on Popular Science.

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Parrots are the chatterboxes of the animal kingdom. These famously social birds can learn new sounds throughout their lives and even produce calls that can be individually recognized by other members of their flock. A new study of monk parakeets found that individual birds have a unique tone of voice similar to humans called a “voice print.” The findings are described in a study published October 3 in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

[Related: The next frontier in saving the world’s heaviest parrots: genome sequencing.]

“It makes sense for monk parakeets to have an underlying voice print,” Simeon Smeele, a co-author of the study and biologist studying parrot social and vocal complexity at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, said in a statement. “It’s an elegant solution for a bird that dynamically changes its calls but still needs to be known in a very noisy flock.”

In humans, our voice print leaves a unique signature in the tone of our voice across every word we say. These voice prints remain even though humans have a very complex and flexible vocal repertoire. Other social animals also use similar cues to recognize one another. Individual dolphins, bats, and birds have a “signature call” that makes them identifiable to other members of their groups. However, signature calls encode identity in only one call type, and there hasn’t been much evidence that suggests animals have unique signatures that last throughout their entire repertoire of calls. 

Parrots use their tongue and mouth to modulate calls similar to the way humans speak. According to Smeele, “their grunts and shrieks sound much more human than a songbird’s clean whistle.” 

Parrots also live in large groups with fluid membership where multiple birds vocalize at the same time. Members need a way to keep track of which individual is making what sound. The question became if the right physical anatomy coupled with the need to navigate complex social lives, helped parrots evolve a voice print. 

In the study, Smeele and his team traveled to Barcelona, Spain—home to the largest population of individually marked parrots in the wild. The parakeets are considered an invasive species and they swarm Barcelona’s parks in flocks with hundreds of members. The Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona has been marking the parakeets for 20 years and have individually identified 3,000 birds.

The team used microphones to record the calls of hundreds of individuals and collected over 5,000 vocalizations in total. They also re-recorded the same individuals over a period of two years, which revealed the stability of the calls over time.

Using a set of computer models, they detected how recognizable individual birds were within each of the five main call types given by this species (contact, tja, trrup, alarm, and growl). They found high variability in the “contact call” that birds use to broadcast their identity. According to the team, this overturned a long-held assumption that contact calls contain a stable individual signal. The new findings suggested that the parakeets are actually using something else for individual recognition.

[Related: These clever cockatoos carry around toolkits to get to food faster.]

To investigate if voice prints were at play, the team used a machine learning model widely used in human voice recognition. The model detects the identity of the speaker using the quality, or timbre, of their voice. The team trained the model to recognize calls of individual birds that were categorized as “tonal” in sound. They then tested to see if the model could detect the same individual from a separate set of calls that were classified as “growling” in sound. The model was able to identify the individual parrots three times better than expected, providing evidence that monk parakeets do actually have a recognizable, individual voice print. 

While exciting, the authors caution that this evidence is still preliminary. Future experiments and analyses could use the parrot tagging work from the team in Barcelona. The GPS devices could help determine how much individuals overlap in their roaming areas.

“This can provide insight into the species’ remarkable ability to discriminate between calls from different individuals,” study co-author and ecologist from Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona Juan Carlos Senar said in a statement.

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What does it mean to be intelligent? If it’s defined by having the biggest brain, then sperm whales—whose noggins are a hefty 20 pounds—would be the brightest creatures on Earth. But, more likely, it’s how a brain is wired. Viewed in this way, intelligence is what gives an organism the best chance to survive and thrive in an environment. Language may be one of the best ways to demonstrate that kind of smarts. 

Though all animals can communicate with others, humans are one of the few species to have a spoken language. Using speech, we could share complex ideas, pass knowledge through generations, and create communities. Whether spoken language actually helped us evolve as species into more advanced beings, however, has never really been tested.

“Language allowing humans to be a more advanced species is an assumption that somebody came up with one day without really trying [to prove] it,” says Erich Jarvis, a professor at Rockefeller University who studies the neurobiology of vocal learning. The idea stuck around, but so have other common beliefs that are not really supported with evidence—like the myth that we only use 10 percent of our brains at any point in time, he points out. 

But Jarvis and his colleagues were able to examine this hypothesis with the help of songbirds. Jarvis’ new study, published today in Science, provides some of the first evidence that vocal learning—one of the crucial components for a spoken language—is associated with problem-solving. Vocal learning is the ability to produce new sounds by imitating others, relying on experience rather than instinct. Birds who could do this and solve problems had bigger brain sizes, the research team found.

The team performed seven cognitive experiments on 214 songbirds from 23 different species. Of these, 21 species were caught from the wild in New York. Two songbirds studied, zebra finches and canaries, are domesticated. The behavioral tests examined the birds’ problem solving, for instance by figuring out how to remove an object to access the food reward. The researchers also gauged two other skills often associated with intelligence: learning by association, plus what’s called reversal learning, in which an animal adjusts its behavior to get a reward.. They then looked at whether being vocal learners helped develop the three skills, comparing 21 bird species to two others, which were vocal non-learners (these birds learned sounds only during a brief developmental period).

[Related: What does brain size have to do with intelligence?]

The biologists noticed a strong relationship between vocal learning and problem-solving skills. Vocal learning bird species could come up with innovative ideas, such as getting seeds or a worm trapped under a cup by removing the obstacle, piercing it, or pulling it apart. “It’s pretty surprising that these two skills are related to intelligence but not the other traits we measured,” explains Jean-Nicolas Audet, an ecologist and neurobiologist at Rockefeller University who served as the lead study author. All three abilities—problem solving, associative learning, and reversal learning—are typically considered “components of intelligence,” he says.

This doesn’t mean that the two bird species who were not vocal learners were stupid. Instead, it shows they did not evolve this one particular form of intelligence. “We have to be careful and very specific when we talk about intelligence because it really depends on which traits we are talking about,” Audet explains.

[Related: Wild birds don’t need your backyard feeders to survive]

Brain size was another benefit to vocal learning that may have supported these problem-solving abilities. The 21 vocal-learning species had slightly larger brains, relative to their body size, than the two who weren’t. Jarvis says it’s possible these big-noggined birds packed more neurons. Or perhaps they evolved to have larger skull space, which gave rise to extra circuits for more advanced vocal learning and problem-solving skills. “This suggests to me that there’s something special about problem solving,” he says. “Like spoken language, it made some species more advanced than others.”

One question left unanswered is why there’s such a strong relationship between problem-solving abilities and vocal learning. The brain areas in charge of vocal learning are not the same ones that get activated when we need to troubleshoot an issue, says Audet. The next step for this team is to take a deeper look into the brains of songbirds and figure out what genes or other brain regions connect these two areas. Some bridge yet undiscovered helps form this type of intelligence.

The post What songbirds can teach us about being smart appeared first on Popular Science.

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The lives of corvid, or the family of birds that include crows, are shockingly complex. They hold ‘monogamish’ relationships, build tools, hold funerals, solve puzzles, and may even have their own form of democracy. Now, researchers have provided the latest peek into corvid life that adds a new element to their intricate and complicated lives—social climbing. Yes, even birds will ditch their old friends if something better comes along, according to a new study published September 11 in Nature.

For their recent experiment, scientists at universities of Exeter and Bristol utilized the Cornish Jackdaw Project to split a group of jackdaws, members of the crow family found in Europe, western Asia and North Africa, into two randomly sorted groups—A and B. They then tagged the birds with transponder chips, worn like little anklets, to tell who was who. 

[Related: Crows and ravens flexed smarts and strength for world dominance.]

As many animal studies go, there’s got to be some kind of snack involved. This time, the scientists set up a feeding source with two locked doors—one filled with grain, a merely okay morsel for a hungry crow, and the other with a much yummier rendition of some grain and some dried mealworms. If a bird visited alone, only the low-quality snack door opened. With a buddy from the same-tagged group, say two As or two Bs, either both doors unlocked or just the high-quality snack door. But when a jackdaw visited the snack dispenser with a member of the opposite-tagged clique, there were no goodies for anybody.

The choice for the birds then was either loyalty or tasty treats. 

“The jackdaws turned out to be very strategic, quickly learning to hang out with members of their own group and ditching old ‘friends’ from the other group so they could get the best rewards,” author Alex Thornton, a professor of cognitive evolution at Exeter, said in a release.

The same couldn’t always be said for familial relationships. Despite the potentially disappointing outcome, jackdaws would still stick with their offspring, siblings, or mating partners. Some long-term relationships, it turns out, were more important to the feathery creatures than a chance at a delicious morsel. 

“The fundamental idea is that if you need to keep track of interactions you have had with other individuals, remember the outcomes of those interactions and use those to adjust your [behavior],” Thornton told the Guardian. “What we were able to do here was test the idea: can individuals keep track of the outcomes of past interactions and update their relationships. It turns out they can.”

For the authors, these results can give us clues to the evolution of intelligence, memory, and social status in the animal kingdom—and even in the human world. 

“Our findings also help us to understand how societies emerge from individual decisions,” author and Exeter PhD student Josh Arbon said in a release. “The balance between strategically playing the field for short-term benefits and investing in valuable long-term partners ultimately shapes the structure of animal societies, including our own.”

The post These crow relatives put food over friendship appeared first on Popular Science.

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New Zealand’s quirky and critically endangered kākāpō have begun to return to the country’s mainland for the first time in almost 40 years. Kākāpōs are the heaviest parrots in the world, with some exceeding six pounds, and they have a lifespan of up to 90 years. Like penguins and ostriches, they can’t fly, so kākāpōs climb trees and forage on the ground for nuts and seeds to eat.  

[Related: A flightless parrot is returning to mainland New Zealand after a 40-year absence.]

The big, green, nocturnal birds used to be widespread across New Zealand, but were hunted to near extinction and threatened by non native predators like cats and dogs. Popular Science magazine described these “curious” green birds as already being “doomed to early extermination” all the way back in April 1895. 

The roughly 250 or so individual birds that are left are managed by New Zealand’s Department of Conservation (DOC) and the South Island’s Ngāi Tahu tribe on five islands that are free of predators. Now equipped with 21st Century genetic science, research platform Genomics Aotearoa is funding high-quality genetic sequencing of almost the entire kākāpō population. The results of an early study of how these full genomic sequences will help manage the health of these iconic birds was published August 28 in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Establishing genetic sequencing methods is not expected to only play a part in kākāpō survival, but other endangered species throughout New Zealand and the rest of the world. Conservation genomics is part of a growing trend in the field. In 2019, a team from San Diego and the University of Hawaii used advanced DNA sequencing technology to create a nearly complete genome assembly for Hawaii’s only remaining lineage of the crow family ‘alalā (Corvus hawaiiensis). The sequencing gave conservationists critical clues into the disease susceptibility, population-level diversity, and genetic load of the alalā to better inform their policies.

The same information could help the kākāpō thrive. This work over the last year has produced two very significant outcomes. First, it has given the team an in-depth understanding of kākāpō biology. It has also produced a high-quality code and reusable pipeline, which allows other researchers to rapidly use these methods in their own work and advanced New Zealand’s genomic capability.

“Kākāpō suffer from disease and low reproductive output, so by understanding the genetic reasons for these problems, we can now help mitigate them,” Andrew Digby, the DOC’s Science Advisor for Kākāpō Recovery, said in a statement. “It gives us the ability to predict things like kākāpō chick growth and susceptibility to disease, which changes our on-the-ground management practices and will help improve survival rates.”

[Related: Eavesdropping on pink river dolphins could help save them.]

Diby added that the Kakapo125+ project is another example of how genetic data can assist population growth. The 125 refers to the number of kākāpō living when the project began in 2015. “The novel genetic and machine learning tools developed can be applied to improve the productivity and survival of other taonga under conservation management,” said Digby.

The sequencing technique was developed by University of Otago microbial scientist Joseph Guhlin and an international team of researchers and could have impacts outside of New Zealand. 

“Using technology created by Google, we have achieved what is likely the highest quality variant dataset for any endangered species in the world,” said Guhlin. “This dataset is made available, through DOC and Ngai Tahu, for future researchers working with kākāpō.”

The post The next frontier in saving the world’s heaviest parrots: genome sequencing appeared first on Popular Science.

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For the second year in a row, the Atlantic puffins living on the rocky islands off Maine’s coast had a rebound year for fledgling chicks, all in the face of record warm waters due to climate change. This second consecutive rebound year is welcome news, after 90 percent of nesting puffins failed to raise a single chick in 2021 while the climate change in New England has put this species, and others like humpback whales and the zooplankton at the base of the Gulfs food web, in jeopardy.

[Related: Cyclones can be fatal for seabirds, but not in the way you think.]

The Gulf of Maine and its bays are among the world’s fastest-warming bodies of water. Since the early 1980s, it has warmed about four degrees Fahrenheit, while the global ocean has risen by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the same period of time. The rising heat has affected the fish stocks in the area that puffins and other species rely on. Haddock used to make up a large portion of puffin diets, but populations have fluctuated in recent years, first increasing in 2017 due to federal management to this year showing signs of a decrease. 

However, a small eel-like fish called the sand lance has been abundant this year. The fish are only about four to eight inches long, but are high in fats and make them a great forage fish for seabirds. A 2020 study found that 72 Atlantic Ocean animal species from whales to bluefish to gannets eat sand lances in the waters from Greenland to North Carolina. 

According to the Maine Monitor, the sand lance were less abundant in the region by mid-July, but the puffins were found feasting on a mixture of haddock, hake, and redfish depending upon where they were. Don Lyons, the director of conservation science at National Audubon Society’s Seabird Institute, told the Maine Monitor, “I can’t offhand recall such a seamless transition from one fish to another. It tells you a lot about the resourcefulness of puffins and at the same time, it’s a reminder of how much we still don’t know of when and where food is for seabirds, and how fast that all can change.”

Lyons estimated that there are now as many as 3,000 puffins in Maine, what he calls a stable population. In 2022, about two-thirds of the puffins fledged—or developed wing feathers that are large enough for flight. While they didn’t reach that number this year, they had a better season than the catastrophic 2021 season despite a rainy and hot summer. The Audubon Society’s Project Puffin has been monitoring the population for 50 years and uses decoys, mirrors, and recordings to attract the birds to suitable nesting sites to raise the next generation of birds.

Maine’s puffin population was once as low as 70 pairs on Matinicus Rock 25 miles off the coast. They were hunted for their feathers and meat in the early 20th Century, but by the 1970’s Audubon conservationists worked to grow puffin colonies in the state, by bringing chicks from Canada to Maine’s Eastern Egg Rock. Puffins still call that tiny rock home, in addition to Seal Island and Petit Manan Island. Live cams keep an eye on them and volunteers and scientists monitor their progress every year.

Currently, Maine’s population are the only breeding Atlantic puffins in the United States. The species lives in areas of the North Atlantic from Maine and Canada eastward to Europe. Iceland, a country well known for its puffins, has seen the puffin populations decline by 70 percent in 30 years largely due to lack of food due to warming oceans.

[Related: Emperor penguins suffer ‘unprecedented’ breeding failure as sea ice disappears.]

While this ability to reproduce despite huge environmental changes does speak to their resiliency as a species, puffins are still at risk of long term dangers from marine heat waves, sea level rise threatening nesting sites, and a loss of food.  

“The problem with climate change is these breeding failures and low breeding productivity years are now becoming chronic,” Bill Sydeman, president and chief scientist of the California-based Farallon Institute, told the AP. “There will be fewer young birds in the population that are able to recruit into the breeding population.”

Some of the ways to help Maine puffin population and other coastal birds in the face of this constant uncertainty include Audubon’s adopt-a-puffin program and advocating for your local seabirds by contacting regional elected officials.

The post Maine’s puffins show another year of remarkable resiliency appeared first on Popular Science.

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The Earth’s South Pole is at a climate change crossroads, with Antarctica’s quickly melting ice and expected consistent ocean heat waves. Now, one of its signature species is in trouble. A study published August 24 in the journal Communications Earth & Environment found that some Emperor penguin colonies saw an unprecedented breeding failure in a region of the continent that experienced a total loss of sea ice in 2022.

[Related: The East Antarctic Ice Sheet could raise sea levels 16 feet by 2500.]

Four out of five Emperor penguin colonies in the Bellingshausen Sea on the western side Antarctica did not see any chicks survive to successfully fledge in the spring of 2022. Emperor penguin chicks typically fledge at four months old, when they’ve developed their first set of waterproof feathers. 

All of the colonies in this study have been discovered in the last 14 years using satellite imagery, and there has only been one previous instance of breeding failure among these penguin populations. 

“We have seen the occasional colony have bad sea ice and early break up, but this most unusual thing in this study is that a whole region has had extremely poor sea ice,” Peter Fretwell, a remote sensing expert and environmental scientist with the British Antarctic Survey and co-author of the study, tells PopSci. 

Similarly, the Halley Bay penguin colony, which was not included in this study and lives in a different part of Antarctica, failed to raise any chicks between 2016 and 2019. That failure was also attributed to sea ice loss. 

From April to January, Emperor penguins depend on stable sea ice that is firmly attached to the shore or ‘land-fast’ ice. Once they arrive at their chosen breeding site, penguins will lay eggs during the Antarctic winter (May to June) in the ice. Eggs will hatch after 65 days, but the chicks do not fledge until December to January during Antarctic summer. 

“This year the ice in the Bellingshausen Sea did not form until late June–when the birds should already be on their eggs. It may be that in future this region could be one of the first to become unsuitable breeding habitat,” says Fretwell.

Between 2018 and 2022, 30 percent of the 62 known Emperor penguin colonies living in Antarctica were affected by partial or total sea ice loss. The British Antarctic Survey said that it is difficult to immediately link specific extreme seasons to climate change, but a longer-term drop in sea ice extent is expected based on current climate models.  

[Related: The march of the penguins has a new star: an autonomous robot.]

By early December 2022, the Antarctic sea ice matched the previous all-time low set in 2021. The central and eastern Bellingshausen Sea region saw the worst of it, with 100 percent sea ice loss.

“Right now, in August 2023, the sea ice extent in Antarctica is still far below all previous records for this time of year,” Caroline Holmes, a British Antarctic Survey polar climate scientist who was not involved in the study, said in a statement. “In this period where oceans are freezing up, we’re seeing areas that are still, remarkably, largely ice-free.”

Previously, Emperor penguins have responded to this sea ice loss by moving to a more stable site the next year. However, this strategy won’t work if the loss of sea ice habitat extends to an entire region. 

These populations have also not been subject to large scale hunting or overfishing and other direct interactions with humans, and climate change is considered to be the only major influence on their long-term population changes. More recent efforts to predict Emperor penguin population changes paint a bleak picture, showing that if the present rate of warming persists, more than 90 percent of colonies will be quasi-extinct by the end of this century.

Daniel P. Zitterbart, a physicist by training and an Emperor penguin remote sensing expert from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who was not involved in the study called it a very important and timely investigation. 

“The sad part is we had all been expecting this, but we expected this later. It happened for so many colonies in just one year, just because of changing weather patterns,” Zitterbart tells PopSci. “Peter points out that this is likely due to La Niña and change in wind patterns, but the study can show us how increased extremes can have an immediate impact on those colonies that are further up north.”

As their habitat is expected to shrink over the next century, scientists are unsure if the areas that they are moving to will have enough resources to host all of the penguins coming in. Studies like this one continue to ring the alarm that Antarctica and its wildlife remain vulnerable to extremes.

“Hopefully, this is a one year thing for now and with the weather pattern changing back to El Niño, the sea ice in this location this year and next year will grow back to what it normally is,” says Zitterbart. “But we all know that this year we had the first 6.4 Sigma event, which means that the sea ice in Antarctica is very low.”

The post Emperor penguins suffer ‘unprecedented’ breeding failure as sea ice disappears appeared first on Popular Science.

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The people of Miami suburb Pinecrest, Florida are facing a particularly unique dilemma this summer—an exploding population of feral peacocks. The community of around 18,000 human residents are trying out a new way to keep the flock of colorful menaces under control: vasectomies. 

[Related: Florida suburb is overrun by fluffy rabbits after breeder goes rogue.]

According to the Miami Herald, the birds that are native to India and Sri Lanka, were brought to the city to be exotic yard ornaments. Peacocks, by nature, are a very vocal force, primarily all in the name of finding a mate. The distinct calls are disturbing locals, particularly at sunrise and sunset, and their residents have also complained about slipping and falling on peacock poop. Many residents still do not want their feathered neighbors to be killed, and hope to co-exist with them in peace. The vasectomies are part of that strategy. 

“Peacocks are bona fide polygamists,” veterinarian Don J. Harris told The New York Times. “We’re going to catch one peacock and probably stop seven females from reproducing. It’s going to have an exponential benefit.” Pinecrest hired Harris to perform the precise procedure on the male birds that display the bird’s signature plumage which also attracts potential mates. 

In September, the town plans to take part in a pilot program in an attempt to curb the bird population through surgical vasectomies. The bold birth control plan was approved by the Miami-Dade County Commission in July.  

“Most people see one peacock and they’re like, oh that’s nice, two—we’re talking about large numbers of birds that take up a lot of space and get very aggressive and protective of their nest,” District 7 Commissioner Raquel Regalado told NBC 6 South Florida.

The plan will involve trapping the male peacocks and sterilizing them. The dominant males will keep the already established pecking order and walk around town with their plumage, while the females will continue to lay eggs. The only real difference after the vasectomies is that the males won’t be able to fertilize the eggs, which should keep the population down. 

Pinecrest plans to spend $7,500 a month on the vasectomies, and an additional $15,000 for medical gear from the county commissioner. 

Iridescent peacocks like these have been a presence in some Miami neighborhoods for decades—with residents expressing mixed emotions about their feathery acquaintances. In 2001, when the peacock population was smaller, Miami-Dade County officially made killing or capturing them illegal, but homeowners could still remove the birds from their property without harming the peacocks. 

[Related: Elephants once roamed Florida—and scientists just stumbled on a graveyard full of them.]

According to Zoo Miami communications director Ron Magill, South Florida’s balmy climate is very accommodating to many exotic species. 

“When those animals get out here in South Florida, they’ve entered Club Med,” Magill told The New York Times. “This is paradise.”

The proof of this is all over the state. Southern Florida has become home to invasive to Burmese pythons that are wreaking havoc on the Everglades in the past decade. Further north in Gainesville, giant land snails up to 10 inches long have been eating their way through plants, stucco from houses, and even car tires while carrying a dangerous human parasite. 

Arguably the most adorable invasion has come from the lionhead rabbits taking over a Fort Lauderdale suburb. Multiple rescue organizations are working to trap and rescue the rabbits that face dangers from cars and the Sunshine State’s extreme heat. 

The post Miami suburb turns to vasectomies to solve its peacock problem appeared first on Popular Science.

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Best for hummingbirds		Perky-Pet 8116-2 Red		SEE IT	This affordable and antique-inspired pick will attract hummingbirds to your yard with its nectar reservoir.
Best window		Nature Gear Window Bird Feeder		SEE IT	Get a glimpse of nature up-close with this see-through window adhesive pick.
Best squirrel-proof		Droll Yankees YF-M Yankee Flipper		SEE IT	Avoid your bird feed being eaten by pesky squirrels with slim and impenetrable design.

Birds are fascinating wildlife and endlessly enjoyable to watch. The best bird feeders will not only help support the local bird population, but they will also bring these delightful animals into your yard and into your trees, making bird watching possible from the comfort of your home. Feeders can be especially useful to birds in the late winter and early spring when their natural food sources are scarce. With so many feeders on the market, we’ll explain the differences and help you find a beautiful, durable feeder sure to bring you hours of viewing enjoyment. 

• Best for hummingbirds: Perky-Pet 8116-2 Red
• Best window: Nature Gear Window Bird Feeder
• Best for cardinals: Perky-Pet Red Cardinal Bird Feeder
• Best squirrel-proof: Droll Yankees YF-M Yankee Flipper
• Best budget: First Nature 3055 32-ounce Hummingbird Feeder

How we picked the best bird feeders

Narrowing down the best bird feeders requires you to consider the types of bird species you want to attract, the frequency of maintenance that is realistic for you, your overall budget, and the best location around your home. Backyard bird enthusiasts know that adding a feeder will not only attract birds, but any other wildlife that thinks they can steal a quick meal. If squirrels are a concern for you, consider a squirrel-proof bird feeder. Nectar-style bird feeders should be drip-proof to prevent unwanted ants and bees. 

Picking the perfect location will also affect how you shop. A bird feeder pole can be installed anywhere, while hanging style feeders require either a tree branch or another structure to allow for hook installation. Choosing a location that will keep your birds safe is important as well: low feeders near bushes can set birds up to be attacked by cats, while hanging feeders too far away from cover can endanger birds from other predators such as hawks. If you want to try and get the closest view you can for birdwatching, consider a window bird feeder which uses a translucent design suction cupped to your window. We’ve selected the best bird feeders on the market for your consideration.

The best bird feeders: Reviews & Recommendations

Attracting birds to your backyard can require some thought, but the payoffs for both kids and experienced bird watchers are immense. Here are the best bird feeders for a variety of situations you may encounter.

Best for hummingbirds: Perky-Pet 8116-2 Red

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If you want to get the chance to view one of nature’s most amazing small birds zipping around, hovering, or even flying backward (they are the only birds that can), you can add a hummingbird feeder to your yard. The best hummingbird feeders are brightly colored (evidence suggests bright red, yellow, and orange feeders work best),  easy to fill with nectar, and offer a drip- and leak-proof design that only a hummingbird can reach. 

This antique-looking hummingbird feeder comes in several vibrant colors, and holds a sizable 24 ounces of nectar. It’s easy to fill and screw on, although the small opening does require the use of a bottle brush for deep cleaning. Take care when cleaning, as this bottle is actually clear glass that is painted to attract more birds.

Best window: Nature Gear Window Bird Feeder

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Take the squinting and the binoculars out of the equation, and bring the birds to you with the best window bird feeder. Window bird feeders are typically constructed out of clear acrylic and mount directly to your window with suction cups. There really is no closer way to attract birds, other than the birds being inside your home (which we don’t recommend). 

Strong suction cups keep this charming acrylic window bird feeder attached securely to your windows. The feeding tray and house detach for easier cleaning. A circular cutout helps to increase the visibility of birds from inside your home. 

Best for cardinals: Perky-Pet Red Cardinal Bird Feeder

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If you’re interested in attracting colorful, non-migratory species, consider a cardinal bird feeder. These colorful birds are some of the most awe-inspiring and beautiful species in nature. Local cardinal populations will benefit from the extra food in a feeder particularly in the fall and winter months when their food sources are scarce. 

This feeder holds up to 2.5 pounds of black-oil sunflower seeds, a favorite snack for cardinals. The circular perch design lets cardinals sit and rest while they snack, and the red-on-red color protects, by helping them blend in. A special zinc-plated finish makes this metal design more durable and resistant to rust.

Best squirrel-proof: Droll Yankees YF-M Yankee Flipper

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There’s a reason why there are so many cartoon scenes about this— it can be downright comical to watch how many inventive ways squirrels come up with to steal food from bird feeders. While amusing, depending on your level of seriousness at attracting birds, it’s important to find a good squirrel-proof bird feeder.

Easy to assemble, this squirrel-proof bird feeder uses weight detection to start spinning the feeder sending any squirrels that make it on, right off again. This squirrel-spinning bird feeder can hold up to five pounds of birdseed and offers four feeding ports.

Best budget: First Nature 3055 32-ounce Hummingbird Feeder

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Luckily, it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money to feed your neighborhood birds. There are many budget-priced bird feeders on the market that are well-rated and attractive. This is a simple, well-reviewed, affordable hummingbird feeder. This feeder features an extra-wide mouth which makes the reservoir easy to fill and clean, and it can hold up to 32 ounces of nectar.

Things to consider before purchasing a bird feeder

What birds do you want to attract?

Hummingbirds spend their lives searching and consuming food. In fact, they need to drink nectar every ten minutes to maintain their fast metabolism. You can make your own nectar at home using granulated sugar and water, or buy a premade nectar. Hummingbirds can visit 1,000 to 2,000 flowers a day in search of their food, which means that regardless of where the nectar comes from, they will be grateful for the easy energy from a well-stocked feeder. Known for their amazing memories, hummingbirds are able to remember nectar locations and may pay a visit to your feeder during their migrations. 

To make your yard a hummingbird’s paradise, garden experts advise luring the birds with nectar-producing flowers, either planted in the ground or in pots and planters. Once in your yard, they will discover your feeder and will be sure to remember their new feeding spot. It’s best to keep your feeder in the partial shade to avoid any spoiling of nectar. To keep ants and bees at bay, keep the exterior of the feeder clean and dry, and give it a wash every one to two weeks with warm soap and water.

Cardinals are most attracted to food sources that are easy and safe for them to access. A cardinal feeder is typically a cylindrical tube (which is either hung up, or supported from below), or a rectangular style, which includes a wide trough at the base filled with seeds. Platform bird feeders are another option, but these can become overwhelmed with other types of birds as well. Stock your cardinal bird feeder with fresh sunflower seeds to make your red beauties happy and healthy.

Build quality

The best window bird feeders are lightweight, just large enough to house your feeding bluebird, and constructed out of good-quality clear acrylic. Look for window feeders that have a pitched roof design to provide shelter from snow and rain. Another important feature is a feeding tray that includes drainage holes. If any water enters the feeder, it will drain away, which will help prevent the seeds from spoiling. 

Most window bird feeders are not designed to be squirrel-proof, so if that’s a concern you may need to experiment with different windows and heights to try and prevent these crafty critters from leaping or dangling onto the window feeder for stolen snacks. Window bird feeders are usually affordable, and a fun way to experiment with bird watching. Reviewers rave about how much children and house cats enjoy these as well. 

Tired of squirrels stealing your bird seed?

Squirrel-proof bird feeders use a few methods to deter squirrels. Some utilize a simple, metal-made tube feeder with chew-resistant enclosures. Another solution can be pole-mounted feeders, which should be a minimum of six feet off the ground, and far enough away from jump-off points that squirrels can use to leap onto the feeder. Finally, some squirrel-proof bird feeders have an engineered design which uses weight detection, so if a squirrel stands on the feeder the seed port immediately closes. All of these options should help keep your bird feeder safe for only birds.

Looking to attract birds without spending a lot of money?

When it comes to features, you can expect more cost-conscious feeders to be constructed out of less expensive materials like plastic. Also expect the size and capacity to be smaller for budget feeders.

The majority of the best bird feeders for hummingbirds (outside of handmade fancy specialty items) are very reasonable in price, as are the majority of small window feeders. Hanging feeders range from very inexpensive to high priced. The good news is there are a lot of options and especially if this is a new hobby, it can make sense to start off small and see if you enjoy owning, viewing, and maintaining bird feeders in your garden before you invest in the more expensive models.

FAQs

Our final thoughts on the best bird feeders

• Best for hummingbirds: Perky-Pet 8116-2 Red
• Best window: Nature Gear Window Bird Feeder
• Best for cardinals: Perky-Pet Red Cardinal Bird Feeder
• Best squirrel-proof: Droll Yankees YF-M Yankee Flipper
• Best budget: First Nature 3055 32-ounce Hummingbird Feeder

The best bird feeders will attract fascinating birds into your yard, while helping your local bird populations thrive. Whether you wish to bring hummingbirds, cardinals, or a variety of local birds to your home, the best feeders will allow for safe, comfortable feeding and keep birdseed fresh. With options in size, color, style, and price, there’s no reason not to start birding right from your own window.

Why trust us

Popular Science started writing about technology more than 150 years ago. There was no such thing as “gadget writing” when we published our first issue in 1872, but if there was, our mission to demystify the world of innovation for everyday readers means we would have been all over it. Here in the present, PopSci is fully committed to helping readers navigate the increasingly intimidating array of devices on the market right now.

Our writers and editors have combined decades of experience covering and reviewing consumer electronics. We each have our own obsessive specialties—from high-end audio to video games to cameras and beyond—but when we’re reviewing devices outside of our immediate wheelhouses, we do our best to seek out trustworthy voices and opinions to help guide people to the very best recommendations. We know we don’t know everything, but we’re excited to live through the analysis paralysis that internet shopping can spur so readers don’t have to.

The post The best bird feeders of 2023 appeared first on Popular Science.

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When the world shut down in the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, people needed to find entertainment and stimulation somewhere. Binging Tiger King on Netflix or making sourdough starter or taking daily walks in nature rapidly became the thing to do. Now, scientists are beginning to quantify just how much collective interest in another COVID hobby—watching and feeding birds—picked up during lockdown. 

[Related: Lockdown made cities friendlier for some birds.]

In a study published August 2 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, a team of researchers used data from Google search index and found that interest in bird feeding surged 115 countries while people were home due to the lockdowns. The work is offering new insight into human-bird interactions around the world. 

Previous research shows that interest in common bird species and friend birds increased during lockdown. The latest study’s team used Google search data to analyze whether there was an increased interest in bird feeding and wild birds at a global and individual-country scale during and after COVID-19 lockdowns compared with before the restrictions began. They also looked at if the level of interest in bird feeding in a country is linked to species richness.

“This study first tests whether this pattern—increased interest in bird feeding in response to COVID-19 lockdowns—holds true for all countries, including those in the Southern Hemisphere,”study co-author and Griffith University in Australia Professor Emeritus Darryl Jones said in a statement.  “If so, COVID-19 lockdowns offered a way to reveal the global extent of bird feeding interest, something that is poorly understood.”

They observed the weekly frequency of search terms such as “bird feeder,” “bird food,” and “bird bath” for all countries that had sufficient search volumes from January 1, 2019 to May 31, 2020 to see if there was an increase in bird-specific searches during each country’s specific lockdown period (typically around February to April 2020). Data on nation-level bird species from BirdLife International was used to measure species richness.

For a period of 52 weeks before the lockdowns, they found that the search intensity was similar to the weeks preceding lockdown on average. After roughly two weeks of lockdowns, a dramatic spike in bird feeding search intensity was evident and the result mirrored the interest in these topics found in the United States, a country with well-documented interest in bird feeding. 

[Related: Expert-approved ways to feed all your favorite birds.]

Countries that did not have bird-related search interest had an average of 294 bird species, whereas the countries that showed a search interest had an average of 511 bird species. Since the proxy measurement for bird feeding interest is a Google search, lower income countries and those with less internet access may not have been captured as well despite an interest in bird feeding practices. The authors note that their method did still capture a surge of interest outside of the United States and the United Kingdom in countries such as Kenya and Pakistan. 

This knowledge on supplementary bird feeding around the world can help scientists better understand bird communities and their migratory patterns. According to the authors, while providing supplementary food for wild birds can be beneficial in terms of survival during lean times and improve health, there is also evidence that suggests that bird feeding may change ecological communities and may have negative effects on species biodiversity.

“If bird feeding is common in other parts of the world, this could impact migration and disease patterns,” said Jones. “It is imperative that we understand the global extent of bird feeding in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of its potential impacts on both avian and human well-being at a continental and global scale.”

Additionally, the team found that some of the reasons for the increased interest in feeding the birds during lockdown was likely related to changes in the relative costs of leisure activities and the psychological benefits of connecting with the natural world during stressful events. 

[Related: Owls, puffins, and even city pigeons glam it up in winning bird photos.]

“If access to other nature-based activities was also reduced, this would make bird feeding seem relatively more attractive,” said Jones. “Moreover, forced time at home during lockdowns may have increased opportunities for people to notice birds in their gardens and may have piqued their interest in bird feeding.”

Future studies could further explore the feeding patterns in parts of the world with limited formal data collection and increase the cultural and biophysical diversity of the locations where local bird feeding is studied.

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A major offshore wind farm provider has just completed the construction of three massive artificial nesting structures (ANS) along England’s East Coast. The trio of massive bird houses is part of an agreement to protect a local, endangered seabird—the black-legged kittiwake gull. According to an announcement from UK-based marine contractor Red7Marine, each structure can house 500 nests for the gulls. The contractor hopes they will provide researchers with the means to monitor the bird population’s health over the course of the farm’s entire lifespan.

One of wind farms’ central drawbacks are their impacts on local bird populations, particularly the effects of off-shore turbines on vulnerable seabirds. And while climate change undoubtedly remains these species’ biggest existential threat, mitigating these unintended byproducts of green infrastructure expansion is key to ensuring a responsible transition towards a sustainable future.

[Related: When wind turbines kill bats and birds, these scientists want the carcasses.]

That outlook was central to the approval of the UK’s Hornsea 3 offshore wind farm, which is the country’s first turbine project to require “ecological compensation,” according to sustainable technology site Electrek on Friday. Once completed in 2025, Hornsea 3 will provide roughly 2.85-gigawatts of power to the country—enough to power over 3 million homes. Before that can happen, however, the Danish wind farm company Ørsted partnered with Red7Marine and others to design and erect the new kittiwake apartment complexes.

The three ANS are located less than a mile off the coast of England, and required a pair of “jack-up” barges alongside a host of other tools to build. According to Red7Marine, a team of architects, engineers, and ecologists collaborated to design the artificial eight-sided nesting walls, which feature narrow ledges to replicate kittiwakes’ natural cliffside habitats. The main structure is also intentionally painted off-white to blend in with both the ocean and sky, while the interior is furnished with tables, chairs, and whiteboards for researchers visiting the locales. Each nest nook also includes sliding Perspex paneling to allow for unobtrusive monitoring of the kittiwakes.

“Kittiwake are listed as at risk from extinction and with climate change as a key driver to their decline, a move towards a green energy system could help considerably in the long-term conservation of the species,” Ørsted’s environmental manager Eleni Antoniou said in a statement provided to Electrek. “In the meantime, the provision of these structures will provide a safe, nesting space to enable future generations to raise young away from predators and out of town centers.”

The post Artificial nests could give endangered birds a home near new offshore wind farm appeared first on Popular Science.

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Best overall		Celestron 71009 SkyMaster		SEE IT	The Celestron SkyMasters combine ultra-sharp focus and 15x magnification for optimal viewing.
Best ergonomics		Nikon Prostaff Binoculars		SEE IT	Lightweight and comfortable, the Nikon Prostaffs can withstand long sessions with ease.
Best budget		Tasco Essentials 8×42		SEE IT	The Tasco Essentials provide bright images with life-like colors in a small package.

The thrill of spotting a beautiful bird never gets old, especially when you’ve got binoculars for bird watching to see every feather in detail. If you’re new to birding, binoculars will help you see more from a single location. The best bird-watching binoculars capture light and color to make it feel like you could reach out and touch the feathers with your finger. Binoculars come in a wide range of prices, from ones that will make you wonder if you’re buying a small car to ones that are easier on the wallet. A pair that fits your budget, birding habits, and hands will let you spot birds like never before. Keep reading to get our views on the best bird-watching binoculars and get a few tips before buying.

• Best overall: Celestron 71009 SkyMaster
• Best close focus: Maven B1 10×42
• Best premium: Olympus 10×50 Binoculars
• Best ergonomic: Nikon Prostaff Binoculars
• Best for travel: Celestron – Nature DX 8×42 Binoculars
• Best waterproof: Bushnell H2O Waterproof/Fogproof Roof Prism Binoculars
• Best budget: Tasco Essentials 8×42

How we chose the best bird-watching binoculars

For a serious birder, binoculars are an investment, whereas a casual amateur doesn’t need quite the same features. But both users want the same thing: the ability to see birds with accurate colors and clear images. To meet that need, I judged the binoculars based on their image clarity, brightness, focus speed, close-focus performance, ergonomics, and weight.

Clarity and brightness: Clarity and brightness come down to the lens and prism design and their coatings. Coatings help target colors and reduce reflection to increase the light that enters the binoculars.

Focus speed: Birds move fast; binoculars that quickly focus mean you still get to see your target.

Close-focus performance: If you’re lucky enough to get within 10 feet of a bird, you want to be able to get even closer with your binoculars.

Ergonomics and weight: You might have to wait a long time for a bird to appear. Good ergonomics will make the experience easier on your hands and shoulders, and lighter options make them easier to hold while watching and waiting.

The best bird-watching binoculars: Reviews & Recommendations

If you enjoy seeing birds up close, you’re in good company. According to a 2016 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service survey, more than 45 million people identified as birders in the United States, and that number is believed to have increased during the pandemic. Whether you’re looking for a premium model with high-quality optics or binoculars you can easily toss into a backpack, there’s a pair that will suit your needs below.

Best overall: Celestron 71009 SkyMaster

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Why they made the cut: Equally well-suited for both expert and novice birders, the Celestron SkyMaster binoculars offer top-of-the-line features at an accessible price.

Specs

• Magnification: 15x
• Lens: 70mm
• Weight: 3.28 pounds

Pros

• Large center focus dial for ultra-sharp focus
• 15x magnification for detailed viewing
• Eyeglass-friendly eyecups

Cons

• Quite heavy

Ready to get up close to your favorite birds? The Celestron 71009 SkyMaster binoculars boast a 15x magnification level that brings you closer to nature than ever before. The large objective lens allows you to catch every moment, even in low-light conditions, and the rugged textured finish helps stabilize your grip.

Beyond these amazing attributes, Celestron has included many thoughtful additions. Your package includes an objective lens cap, tripod, and adapter for your binoculars. Note that this pair is quite heavy, weighing a hefty 3.28 pounds. For best function during extended bird-watching adventures, it’s recommended to use these with a tripod. For more options, check out our guide to the best binoculars for hiking.

Best close focus: Maven B1 10×42

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Why they made the cut: The Maven can get crystal-clear close focus and includes focus adjustments that are a cinch to do, even when you’re freaking out about being super close to a new bird.

Specs

• Magnification: 10x
• Lens: 42mm
• Weight: 1.76 pounds

Pros

• Easy to adjust focus
• Extra-low dispersion glass maximizes available light
• Excellent clarity and color at close distances

Cons

• Can be hefty for smaller users

The Maven B1 features impressive focus that’s a cinch to use. This pair also features extra-low dispersion glass that resists reflection to maximize the amount of light that enters the binoculars. For you, more light means better clarity and color even as conditions start to dim.

While we love this model for its close focus, the Maven is definitely up there with the top binoculars for distances as well. A wide field of view makes it easier to spot small, quick birds. This model is completed with a durable casing to protect them from the elements and comes with a microfiber storage bag.

Best premium: Olympus 10×50 Binoculars

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Why they made the cut: You’ll be able to count every feather with the wide field of view and magnification power of these Olympus binoculars.

Specs

• Magnification: 10x
• Lens: 50mm
• Weight: 1.88 pounds

Pros

• Wide field of view
• Aspherical lenses
• Responsive focus wheel

Cons

• Zoom lever can be difficult to operate

If you’re ready to take your bird watching to the next level, consider the Olympus 10×50 Binoculars. This pair boasts incredible optical clarity with zero chromatic aberration. The wide field of view means that even the smallest avian friends appear as sharp, bright images, with excellent color rendition and contrast.

Equally excellent for daytime or nighttime observation, these binoculars feel as good as they look. The body is coated in a protective rubber, adding a tactile edge to the equipment. Paired with the smooth hinge and included case, neck strap, and lens covers, this option will make you feel like a bird-watching pro atop your own Mt. Olympus.

Best ergonomic: Nikon Prostaff Binoculars

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Why they made the cut: Nikon’s cutting-edge technology, paired with the comfort birders crave, makes the Prostaff Binoculars an instant classic.

Specs

• Magnification: 8x
• Lens: 42mm 
• Weight: 1.43 pounds

Pros

• High-reflective mirror-coated prisms
• Shock resistant
• Waterproof
• Compatible with tripods

Cons

• No image stabilization

The Nikon Prostaff Binoculars are excellent for a devoted birder. Featuring turn-and-slide rubber eyecups and a specialized long eye relief design, they’re a perfect fit for all birdwatchers, including those who wear eyeglasses. This lightweight pair sits easily in hand, while rubber armoring provides shock resistance. They’re also waterproof, so in the event of an accidental rainstorm, your hearty binoculars should be OK.

The high-reflective mirror-coated prisms provide excellent light transmission, while nitrogen gas means fog and mold will not form inside the optical system. Even in foggy or darkening conditions, you can spot your favorite species in crisp detail with true-to-life colors. Nikon’s trusted technology allows this pair to rise above the rest when it comes to ergonomic comfort and design.

Best for travel: Celestron – Nature DX 8×42 Binoculars

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Why they made the cut: At 12.1 ounces, these lightweight binoculars are easy to stow into a backpack but come with premium features and protection.

Specs

• Magnification: 8x
• Lens: 42mm
• Weight: 3.28 pounds

Pros

• High-quality optics
• Waterproof
• Lightweight
• Protected by rubber

Cons

• Expensive

These binoculars are comfortable, light, and easy to handle. Whether you’re watching shorebirds flock or are fascinated by pigeons fighting over a french fry on the other side of the street, you’ll enjoy both a wide field of view at a distance and a sharp focus close-up.

Best waterproof: Bushnell H2O Waterproof/Fogproof Roof Prism Binocular

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Why they made the cut: These waterproof binoculars are rugged and great for taking on the water.

Pros

• Waterproof 
• Durable
• Fog-proof
• Eyecups good for people who wear glasses

Cons

• Heavier than some models

This pair is a good value all on its own. For intrepid birders in boats or braving wet conditions, the waterproof and fog-proof features make them a fine choice to pack alongside your rain jacket. People who wear glasses will appreciate the adjustable eyecups.

Best budget: Tasco Essentials 8×42

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Why they made the cut: The Tasco Essentials has just enough of everything for the beginner birder and won’t put you over a tight budget.

Specs

• Magnification: 8x
• Lens: 42mm
• Weight: 1.45 pounds

Pros

• Multi-coated lenses improve resolution and brightness
• Compact size and lightweight
• Weather-resistant housing

Cons

• Slow to focus

The Tasco Essentials 8×42 may not have the focal speed and crystal clarity of some of the more expensive models on our list, but they’re impressive in their price range. A lightweight design and weather-resistant housing create binoculars for those who don’t want to get weighed down while on more rugged birding adventures.

Prism and lens coatings create clearer images and offer good brightness at this price point. You might have to wait a little longer at dawn and dusk for the best visibility, but you’ll get great views without investing an arm and a leg in your binoculars. Where you’ll see a big performance difference with this model is that they are much slower to focus. However, be patient, and you’ll get your views.

Things to consider before buying bird-watching binoculars

Binoculars have numbers like 10×42 or 8×42 after the name. The first number is the magnification, and the second is the diameter of the objective lens. (The objective lens is the one closest to the bird.) The objective lens can give you a good idea of how big the binoculars are. Larger lenses also gather more light for brighter, clearer images.

Field of view

Birds are small, so you need to balance magnification with field of view. Birdwatchers tend to prefer 8x magnification for its wider field of view over the extra magnification offered with 10x models.

Lenses, prism design, and coatings

Lenses and prisms with high-tech coatings help focus colors and capture light to provide clear, accurate images. These coatings and lens designs are often why two pairs of binoculars may look the same on the outside but have hundreds of dollars difference in their price. On the inside, the more expensive binoculars have extra coatings that focus on colors for better accuracy and allow more light to enter the lens. That helps create brighter images and clarity from one end of the lens to the other.

FAQs

Final thoughts on bird-watching binoculars

• Best overall: Celestron 71009 SkyMaster
• Best close focus: Maven B1 10×42
• Best premium: Olympus 10×50 Binoculars
• Best ergonomic: Nikon Prostaff Binoculars
• Best for travel: Celestron – Nature DX 8×42 Binoculars
• Best waterproof: Bushnell H2O Waterproof/Fogproof Roof Prism Binoculars
• Best budget: Tasco Essentials 8×42

If you’re ready to invest in binoculars to use for every bird outing and conditions, the Olympus Binocular 10×50 are the ones. This pair’s color, clarity, and brightness outshine their price point. However, if you’re on a more conservative budget, the Tasco Essentials 8×42 provides great viewing with a smaller price tag.

Why trust us

Popular Science started writing about technology more than 150 years ago. There was no such thing as “gadget writing” when we published our first issue in 1872, but if there was, our mission to demystify the world of innovation for everyday readers means we would have been all over it. Here in the present, PopSci is fully committed to helping readers navigate the increasingly intimidating array of devices on the market right now.

Our writers and editors have combined decades of experience covering and reviewing consumer electronics. We each have our own obsessive specialties—from high-end audio to video games to cameras and beyond—but when we’re reviewing devices outside of our immediate wheelhouses, we do our best to seek out trustworthy voices and opinions to help guide people to the very best recommendations. We know we don’t know everything, but we’re excited to live through the analysis paralysis that internet shopping can spur so readers don’t have to.

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For the first time in almost 40 years, New Zealand’s quirky and critically endangered kākāpō will return to the country’s mainland. Kākāpō are large flightless parrots that used to be widespread across New Zealand, before being hunted to near extinction. The birds last lived on mainland New Zealand in the 1980s. The last time they were present on the North Island was in the 1960s when five of the birds were living in captivity, according to New Zealand’s Department of Conservation.

[Related: Researchers release more than 5,000 snails in the Pacific.]

Currently, kākāpō only live on five offshore islands: Pukenui (Anchor Island) and Te Kakahu o Tamatea (Chalky island) in Fiordland, Whenua Hou (Codfish Island) and Pearl Island near Rakiura Stewart Island and Hauturu-o-Toi (Little Barrier Island).  

The Department of Conservation in partnership with the South Island’s Ngāi Tahu tribe is moving four male kākāpō from Whenua Hou near Rakiura Stewart Island to Maungatautari (Sanctuary Mountain) in Waikato. The four kākāpō are not intended to breed at Maungatautari. The main focus of the project is learning what types of new habitat, outside of the established offshore islands, that the kākāpō can live in.

This translocation follows decades of conservation work through the Kākāpō Recovery Programme. The effort utilized modern science and Māori matauranga (knowledge) to help bring the iconic species back from extinction. The population doubled to reach a high of 252 birds between 2016 and 2022.

Returning this critically endangered nocturnal ground-dwelling parrot back to the mainland is significant for the whole country and a shared success story for all partners involved, according to the team. 

“Kākāpō are one of Aotearoa’s [New Zealand’s] most iconic and rare species, recovering from a population low of 51 birds in 1995,” Department of Conservation Manager for Kākāpō Deidre Vercoe said in a statement. “Until now, kākāpō have been contained to a few predator-free offshore islands, so to have them now returning to the mainland is a major achievement for all involved.”   

Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu Deputy Kaiwhakahaere (manager) Matapura Ellison added that this is a key aspect of the translocation is the iwi to iwi (people to people) transfer of the four birds from Ngāi Tahu to Ngāti Koroki Kahukura, Raukawa, Ngāti Hauā, and Waikato.

“This is a milestone translocation, and we are thankful for our iwi partners who will keep our taonga (treasured) kākāpō safe at their new habitat on Maungatautari,” Ellison said in a statement. “The whanaungatanga [forming relationships] between our iwi is strengthened further through the shared kaitiakitanga of these precious manu.”

[Related: This three-foot-tall parrot proves New Zealand is the mecca of giant weird birds.]

This translocation is a new phase in the recovery of this marks a new phase for the recovery of this  taonga (treasured) species. Returning them to their natural range on the mainland in unmanaged populations has long been a goal, but they need a habitat that is free of introduced mammalian predators such as rats from escaped ships. 

The translocation will be marked with a Maori welcoming ceremony called pōwhiri and celebration at Pōhara Marae followed by the release at Maungatautari. The ceremony is set to acknowledge the many people and groups that played a part in kākāpō conservation and the work to make the mountain a “kākāpō-proof” and predator-free inland sanctuary. It will also mark the transfer of care of these four founding birds between peoples.

Kākāpō are experts at camouflage, and the team believes it is unlikely that visitors to the sanctuary will come across them. Visitors could, however, hear their distinctive ‘booming’ calls for the first time in several years. 

“Sanctuary Mountain is a large space, with plenty of good habitat for kākāpō, but it’s still unknown whether they will successfully establish here long-term,” said Vercoe.  “The main focus of this translocation is to learn if kākāpō can thrive in a fenced sanctuary, while taking pressure off the islands ahead of future breeding seasons.”

The post A flightless parrot is returning to mainland New Zealand after a 40-year absence appeared first on Popular Science.

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This article was originally featured on High Country News.

It’s a crisp fall evening in Grand Teton National Park. A mournful, groaning call cuts through the dusky blue light: a male elk, bugling. The sound ricochets across the grassy meadow. A minute later, another bull answers from somewhere in the shadows.

Bugles are the telltale sound of elk during mating season. Now, new research finds that male elk’s bugles sound slightly different depending on where they live. Other studies have shown that whale, bat and bird calls have regional dialects, too, but a team led by Jennifer Clarke, a behavioral ecologist at the Center for Wildlife Studies and a professor at the University of La Verne in California, is the first to identify such differences in any species of ungulate. 

Hearing elk bugle in Rocky Mountain National Park decades ago inspired Clarke to investigate the sound. “My graduate students and I started delving into the library and could find nothing on elk communication, period,” she said. That surprised her: “Thousands of people go to national parks to hear them bugle, and we don’t know what we’re listening to.”

Her research, published earlier this year in the Journal of Mammalogy, dug into the unique symphony created by different elk herds. While most people can detect human dialects — a honey-thick Southern drawl versus a nasal New England accent—differences in regional elk bugles are almost imperceptible to human ears. But by using spectrograms, a visual representation of sound frequencies, researchers can see the details of each region’s signature bugles. “It’s like handwriting,” Clarke said. “You can recognize Bill’s handwriting from George’s handwriting.”

Pennsylvania’s elk herds were translocated from the West in the early 1900s, and today they have longer tonal whistles and quieter bugles than elk in Colorado. Meanwhile, bugles change frequency from low to high tones more sharply in Wyoming than they do in Pennsylvania or Colorado.

Clarke isn’t sure why the dialects vary. She initially hypothesized that calls would differ based on the way sound travels in Pennsylvania’s dense forests compared to Colorado and Wyoming’s more open landscapes, but her data didn’t support that theory. Clarke hopes to find out whether genetic variation — which is more limited in Pennsylvania’s herd — might explain differences in bugles, and whether those differences are learned by young males listening to older bulls.

“It’s not as though a song or vocal learning is ‘all environmental’ or ‘all genetic’. It’s an interplay between both.” 

Clarke’s research adds a small piece to the larger puzzle of animal communication, said Daniel Blumstein, a biologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the study. “It’s not as though a song or vocal learning is ‘all environmental’ or ‘all genetic,’” he said. “It’s an interplay between both.” Blumstein, a marmot communication researcher, added that the mechanisms behind these vocal variations deserve more study.

These unanswered questions are part of the larger field of bioacoustics, which blends biology and acoustics to deepen our understanding of the noises that surround us in nature. Bioacoustics can sometimes be used as a conservation tool to monitor animal behavior, and other studies are shedding light on how it affects animal evolution, disease transfer, cognition and culture.

Elk are not the only species with regional dialects. In the United States, eastern and western hermit thrushes sing different song structures, and the white-crowned sparrow’s song helps ornithologists identify where it was born. Crested gibbons and Campbell’s monkeys also have localized dialects in their songs and calls, as does the rock hyrax, a mammal that looks like a rodent but is actually related to elephants.

Similar differences exist underwater, where whale songs have unique phrases that vary by location. Sperm whales in the Caribbean have clicking patterns in their calls that differ from those of their Pacific Ocean counterparts. Orcas in Puget Sound use distinctive clicks and whistles within their own pods, while also using universal sounds to communicate with orcas in other pods.

Clarke also studies the vocalizations of ptarmigan, flying foxes and Tasmanian devils. Her next research project will shed light on how bison mothers lead their herds and communicate with their calves. “They’re the heart of the herd,” she said. “What are they talking about?”   

Kylie Mohr is an editorial fellow for High Country News writing from Montana. Email her at kylie.mohr@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy. 

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Bathing is an almost universal behavior among avians, yet scientists are still trying to understand the evolutionary advantage of clean feathers. While birds enjoy a good washing, they don’t splish and splash in just any mud puddle. They’re attracted to gently moving water that’s relatively clean. That’s where solar birdbaths enter the picture. 

Solar power saves energy, eliminates cords, and, importantly, creates a quieter water pump: Birds can get skittish around new or loud noises. Some solar birdbath models also feature a battery that stores energy to power the water fountain after the sun goes down or on cloudy days. Birdbaths are a stand-alone way to attract birds to your yard, but they also make a great companion for a bird feeder. Once feathered friends call your yard home, they help boost the health (and attractiveness) of your yard by eating harmful bugs and weed seeds and pollinating plants. 

The best solar birdbaths: Reviews & Recommendations

Best for gardeners: VIVOHOME Outdoor Bird Bath and Solar Powered Round Pond Fountain

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This attractive birdbath includes a solar-powered water pump. The pump shoots water into the air anywhere from 12 to 20 inches to attract feathered friends. It also comes with multiple fountain heads to change up the water patterns, prompting birds to come back for more. The weatherproof polyresin’s antique copper finish looks classy, but it’s lightweight, so you can relocate it from your garden to your patio at any time.

Best for modernists: Solar Bird Bath Fountain Pump

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Cloudy days won’t slow down the flow of this pump, thanks to an onboard 3000mAh battery. This one charges in both sunny and partly cloudy condistions . Eight different nozzles change up the aquatic experience, spraying a maximum of 27 inches into the air.

Best for other birds: MUMTOP Outdoor Glass Birdbath Solar Birdbaths with Metal Stand

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Birds of a feather flock together? That’s the idea behind this glass birdbath bowl inspired by the peacock. The bowl’s bright colors and mesmerizing pattern offer a vibrant addition to your yard. Solar power keeps water moving, but it also provides fuel for LED lights, so the birdbath acts as a decorative feature day or night. The 18-inch bowl holds enough water to attract birds, yet doesn’t overtake the yard. 

Best for techno birds: AISITIN 6.5W Solar Fountain with LED Light

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Transform a pond, bowl, or bucket into the birds’ favorite bathing spot with a floating, Technicolor island. This model runs on either solar energy or a battery that holds up to 7 hours of running time after the sun goes down. It includes four stabilizers to center it in a bucket or bowl, or it can float in a pond. Eight nozzles provide different spray heights and shapes, allowing you to adjust it to your (and the birds’) preferences.

What attracts birds to birdbaths? 

Feathers serve several important purposes. They give birds insulation, waterproofing, and act as decoration to attract a mate. Consequently, maintaining the health of those feathers is important to keep birds alive and thriving. Almost all bird species regularly take a dip, but little research has been done on why birds bathe. There are several working theories behind the behavior, starting with the same reason people bathe: cleanliness. 

Birds replace their feathers once or twice a year. However, the fronds collect dirt and bacteria and break down over time. Bathing removes soil and oils that may get in the way of flight, waterproofing, and insulation. Water can also help remove mites and bacteria that degrade the feathers. 

A 2012 study of European starlings suggested that birds with clean feathers were more efficient fliers. What’s more, the scientists found that starlings that didn’t regularly bathe were less able to perceive threats and could be prone to long-term stress. 

Scientists haven’t pinpointed all of the benefits of clean feathers, but they may also offer a survival advantage. In one 2009 study, bathed birds were more likely to eat food despite the threat of a predator, suggesting that they knew their agility could help them escape danger. 

However, birds have their standards and don’t usually bathe in a muddy puddle. They prefer slow, moving water that’s generally cleaner. Birds also prefer shallow water; in depths of up to two inches, they can maneuver and wash in relative safety. 

Do birds care about solar energy? 

Birdbaths equipped with solar-powered water pumps have qualities birds like, even though the avians’ preference may not be a conscious one. Solar pumps may be surrounded by solar panels or connected to them via a cord. In the case of designs surrounded by solar panels, the entire unit fits inside the birdbath’s basin. Those that connect via a cord have the water pump in the basin and the solar panels outside of the basin. 

The panels absorb energy from the sun and turn it into power that fuels the pump.  Some models, hybrids, can also run off of solar or a standard power outlet. Hybrid models work well in areas where cloud cover may frequently block enough solar energy from reaching the panels. 

Related: Best bird feeders: Enjoy a backyard filled with birdsong

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This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

Some people may be picky eaters, but as a species we are not. Birds, bugs, whales, snails, we’ll eat them all. Yet our reliance on wild animals goes far beyond just feeding ourselves. From agricultural feed to medicine to the pet trade, modern society exploits wild animals in a way that surpasses even the most voracious, unfussy wild predator. Now, for the first time, researchers have attempted to capture the full picture of how we use wild vertebrates, including how many, and for what purposes. The research showcases just how broad our collective influence on wild animals is.

Previously, scientists have tallied how much more biomass humans take out of the wild than other predators. But biomass is only a sliver of the total picture, and researchers wanted a fuller understanding of how human predatory behavior affects biodiversity. Analyzing data compiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, researchers have now found that humans kill, collect, or otherwise use about 15,000 vertebrate species. That’s about one-third of all vertebrate species on Earth, and it’s a breadth that’s up to 300 times more than the next top predator in any ecosystem.

The predators that give us the biggest run for our money, says Rob Cooke, an ecological modeler at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and a coauthor of the study, are owls, which hunt a notably diverse array of prey. The Eurasian eagle owl, for instance, is one of the largest and most widely distributed owls in the world. Not a picky eater, this owl will hunt up to 379 different species. According to the researchers’ calculations, humans take 469 species across an equivalent geographical range.

Yet according to Chris Darimont, a conservation scientist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia and a coauthor of the study, the biggest shock isn’t how many species we affect but why we take them. The “ta-da result,” he says, “is that we remove, or essentially prey on, more species of animals for non-food reasons than for food reasons.” And the biggest non-food use, the scientists found, is as pets and pet food. “That’s where things have gone off the rails,” he says.

There is some nuance to this broad trend. When it comes to marine and freshwater species, our main take is for human consumption. For terrestrial animals, however, it depends on what kind of animal is being targeted. Mammals are mostly taken to become people food, while birds, reptiles, and amphibians are mainly trapped to live in captivity as pets. In all, almost 75 percent of the land species humans take enter the pet trade, which is almost double the number of species we take to eat.

The problem is especially acute for tropical birds, and the loss of these species can have rippling ecological consequences. The helmeted hornbill, a bird native to Southeast Asia, for example, is captured mainly for the pet trade or for its beak to be used as medicine or to be carved like ivory. With their massive bills, these birds are one of the few species that can crack open some of the largest, hardest nuts in the forests where they live. Their disappearance limits seed dispersal and the spread of trees around the forest.

Another big difference between humans’ influence on wild animals and that of other predators is that we tend to favor rare and exotic species in a way other animals do not. Most predators target common species since they are easier to find and catch. Humans, however, tend to covet the novel. “The more rare it is,” says Cooke, “the more that drives up the price, and therefore it can spiral and go into this extinction vortex.”

That humans target the largest and flashiest animals, Cooke says, threatens not only their unique biological diversity and beauty, but also the roles they play in their ecosystems. Of the species humans prey on, almost 40 percent are threatened. The researchers suggest industrialized societies can look to Indigenous stewardship models for ways to more sustainably manage and live with wildlife.

Andrea Reid, a citizen of the Nisg̱a’a Nation and an Indigenous fisheries scientist at the University of British Columbia, notes that people have been fishing for millennia. “But the choices that shape industrial fishing,” she says, like how people consume fish that were caught far away from their own homes, “are what contribute to these observed high levels of impact on fish species.”

If we want wild species—fish and beyond—to survive, Reid says, we need to reframe our relationship with them, perhaps from predator to steward.

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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NESTLED IN the beach town of Ocean City, New Jersey, a nondescript summer home stands among rows of vacation rentals. Inside in the darkness, a hawk snoozes, a hungry falcon flaps its wings, and an owl stares intensely with orange eyes. This birdy hangout is not a summer home: It’s a falconry mews, where up to 18 birds of prey, or raptors, eat, rest, cool off, and get groomed. 

Just before 10 a.m., as the town’s 2.5-mile boardwalk comes to life with shorebirds and humans riding bikes, veteran falconer Bill Brown is outside the mews preparing to feed a quail to a large Harris’s hawk named Karen. He’s been tending to her for only a few days, so the two are getting better acquainted. Brown smiles and talks to Karen as if she were a family member. To him, birds and the ancient art of falconry are sacred. “Once it’s in your blood, it’s in your blood,” he explains.

Ocean City’s lifeblood is its popular boardwalk, which Karen and the other birds from the mews defend with beak and talon. Packed with candy-colored miniature golf courses, two amusement parks, one water park, and countless caloric delights, the beachside attraction sees hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.

While “America’s Greatest Family Resort” boasts 8 miles of beaches and a welcoming atmosphere, the boardwalk has become known for a more menacing presence in recent years: gulls who watch for their chance to swoop in and steal everything from Old Bay–seasoned french fries to funnel cake to entire cones of chocolate custard.

“I mean, [the birds are] aggressive, like borderline attacking and going for people’s food. It became a very serious scenic safety risk for a lot of the families on the boardwalk, and they wouldn’t even see it coming,” says Wes Kazmarck, a lifelong Ocean City resident and the president of the Boardwalk Merchants Association. 

Kazmarck owns the Surf Mall, one of the larger businesses on the boardwalk, which sells an assortment of souvenirs and beach gear. He remembers frightened and confused gulls darting into the store and then desperately trying to escape. It created a hazard for shoppers as the birds frantically flapped their wings and zoomed around the store. “We really couldn’t get them out until the mall was closed. Then you’re pulling a 15-hour day and you want to go home, but instead you’re trying to get a seagull out of the building. That situation was terrible,” says Kazmarck.

Charlene and Bruce Twiggs, who have lived on the island full time for more than 30 years, also watched as the gulls’ aggression transformed from a nonissue into something more serious. “I was eating a sandwich, and I turned my head to talk to someone, and it came down just like that. It got my hair and everything as it was pulling away with my sandwich,” laughs Charlene, recounting a story from a few years ago.

Ocean City officials knew that they needed to act for safety, public health, and tourism, but they didn’t place a bet on weapons or harmful chemical pest control methods. Instead, they looked to the past with the thousands-year-old art of falconry. Today, a group of raptors and their handlers harness the power of the predator-prey relationship on the city’s boardwalk to keep the gulls away from food-laden tourists and push them toward the water, where they typically forage. While this abatement program is lauded by many scientists as a good solution at the moment, it’s also a statement about just how much humans encroach on habitats up and down the Jersey Shore.

Quintessential opportunists 

The relationship between humans and gulls is tense at best and deadly to the birds at worst. Often maligned as “rats with wings” (a nickname also shared by common pigeons) or “dump ducks,” the gritty seabirds have gotten used to grifting off humans in vacation spots, city lots, and landfills across the world. But their scavenging ways have set off a backlash. People have purposely fed gulls sandwiches laced with poison, shot them with guns, and even crushed their eggs.

“Seabirds have to navigate three realms. They have to fly; then they spend some of their time on land, at least to breed; then [they spend] some of their time in the ocean. That’s pretty incredible,” says Sarah Courchesne, a program ornithologist with Mass Audubon. “People have such a mixed relationship with them. They’ll feed them on purpose, and on the same beach, someone else is flailing at [the gulls] with a baseball bat because they’re so enraged with something [being] near them.”

Julie Ellis, a biologist with the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine in Philadelphia, calls gulls quintessential opportunists. “They’re really flexible in terms of what they eat and where they nest. They’re super adaptable,” she explains. This flexibility has given them an evolutionary advantage. Unless a predator like a human or a raptor is around, gulls rest easily at the top of the food chain. While most species of gulls typically do not start to breed until they are 2 to 4 years old, herring gulls begin at 5. This is a sign of their general success as a species; they don’t face pressures to reproduce quickly and keep their populations up. 

That also gives them room to learn about people and different survival techniques from a young age, says Noah Perlut, an ornithologist at the University of New England in Maine. “They’re watching our behavior constantly, nonstop. Their eyes are always open, seeing everything that’s happening. They’re studying us.”

Herring gulls have even been observed tracking human eye movements to try to follow what we are seeing. At times, they’ll risk getting close: If a gull realizes it’s safe enough to mingle with crowds, it will weave in and out of traffic to pick up discarded snacks. Sometimes caused by a process called habitation and sometimes just by the gulls’ individual risk-taking nature, certain birds are not afraid of our kind. Like people, they have individual personalities and talents—some won’t go anywhere near us, while others have developed the skill to go after food in busy places, like a boardwalk.

This buffet of human snacks has a complicated effect on the birds. Gulls on the coast primarily stick to a natural diet of clams, fish, and crustaceans. According to Ellis, there is some evidence that having human food sources in the winter and other lean times may help young birds survive as they’re learning how to forage. “But there is also evidence that eating hot dogs and junk food is not so great for reproduction,” she says.

While most species of gulls are nowhere near extinction, certain populations around the world have declined as much as 70 percent since the 1970s. Warming oceans have shifted the birds’ aquatic food sources, and rising sea levels encroach on their nesting sites. However, people also directly threaten them in small ways.

“The things that are their greatest strengths are the things that humans tend to despise them for,” Courchesne says. “We have this theme in the way we look at wildlife where the more strongly associated a wild species is with humans, the more we hate it. We like things that … live way off in the wilderness.”

In Ocean City, the conflict emerges as gulls are forced to contend with a human population that can swell from under 12,000 to roughly 150,000 in the summer. The birds’ numbers increase as well, with the return of some flocks that left for the winter and the arrival of newer juvenile gulls from April to July. Laughing gulls represent the majority of the boardwalk’s french fry thieves—their signature calls provide a natural soundtrack to summer. But the island, which runs along a major migratory flyway, provides a haven for many avian kinds, including herring gulls, great black-backed gulls, peregrine falcons, piping plovers, and ospreys. 

Initially, boardwalk merchants tried everything from netting to spike stirrups to sound machines to keep the gulls away—with little success. The birds’ increasing boldness reached a boiling point in 2019, when longtime mayor and third-generation boardwalk business owner Jay Gillian decided he’d had enough.

“When I watched a gull swoop down on a stroller and hit a toddler’s face, I knew that we had to try something different,” Gillian says. He asked the town’s business administrator to search for solutions, and they eventually found East Coast Falcons based in Lodi, New Jersey. The group uses raptors as a natural form of pest control called abatement: The trained, captive-bred hunters will chase and scare away pest species such as gulls and pigeons, but usually will not kill them. 

The city hired East Coast Falcons to patrol the boardwalk with their birds of prey for 12 hours a day from August 3 to September 2, 2019, as a test run. The effect was almost immediate. “It was pretty remarkable to see the gulls scatter from their very first sight of a falcon in the air. We believed right away that this would be a success,” Gillian recalls.

Fast forward to early 2023, when the city announced a three-year contract with East Coast Falcons worth up to $317,000. Instead of covering only the busiest summer months, the abatement program now starts on April 7 and will run until October 22, covering the height of tourist season and the months that border it. The raptors will patrol the island, including the boardwalk and along Asbury Avenue, a popular destination for families at the center of the island. 

“Especially since COVID, outdoor dining has become more popular, and Ocean City is increasingly becoming a year-round town. The expansion of the program serves our downtown shopping and dining district and the important shoulder seasons for all our businesses,” Gillian says.

The birds are back in town

The idea of humans pitting nature against nature as a form of biological control has become almost commonplace in America. The University of New England recently opted to control the school’s mosquito population with a combination of birds, bats, and plants—and reducing the use of noxious pesticides. Meanwhile, in California, Disneyland has allowed a colony of feral cats to roam free, keeping the non–Mickey Mouse rodent population under control. (While often effective, methods involving free-roaming felines can backfire and increase predation on native wildlife.) 

In the same way, airports and landfills around the country have started bird abatement operations to keep flocks from grounding flights and getting killed by jet engines. But the boardwalk assignment on the Jersey Shore came as a surprise, even to a seasoned falconer like East Coast Falcons owner Erik Swanson.

“I was actually laughing when I came down and looked at this job,” Swanson says. “But then my wife and I saw that children [in Ocean City] were not having a good time. The greatest time of my life was going to the beach with my dad and my mother—it was magical. Here kids are running away from gulls.”

For the 2023 season, Swanson and his team are enlisting two Harris’s hawks, eight falcons of varying species, eight more back-up falcons, and one Eurasian eagle-owl to keep people’s food out of the beaks of Ocean City’s gulls. The raptors themselves have become local VIPs. On a busy Saturday in early spring, the falconers can’t even walk 6 feet without boardwalk visitors stopping to ask questions or comment on their sidekicks. 

“The owl’s back! Does he still like mice? Wait, that’s a hawk,” pipes up one man with two teenagers in tow as a falcon named Diambi heads out to 10th Street beach for some training.  

Another more bloodthirsty boardwalk patron says, “Oh, I hope he takes out a seagull!”

Ozzy, the Eurasian eagle-owl, is the longest-serving boardwalk bird in the mews; his species is among the largest of the world’s owls. As his handler strolls by with the imposing, 2-foot predator perched on his glove, people group together to get a closer look. Like any seasoned celebrity, Ozzy is completely unfazed by all the attention.

Owls, falcons, and hawks are highly adaptable, similar to the gulls that fear them. The flexibility makes them prime sidekicks for abatement and hunting with humans, according to Michelle Hawkins, a veterinarian professor at the University of California, Davis and director of the California Raptor Center. “These birds adjust to urban environments. [Falconers] go out there and kind of push them through all kinds of different extremes to get them comfortable with whatever they might come into contact with,” she says. 

Hawkins and her team enlist help from falconers daily while rehabilitating injured birds. One way they collaborate is in training raptors like young eagles that would typically learn how to hunt from a parent in the wild. “The [falconers] teach us a lot. They’re working with their birds every single day, and they know everything about them,” says Hawkins.

In fact, the early adopters of modern falconry played a large role in the rise of the conservation movements of the mid-20th-century. Magazines like Popular Science highlighted the art and helped younger people get interested in falconry, wildlife biology, and conservation.

Experts in the practice began to organize and pressure legislators when the peregrine falcon nearly vanished in the US due to the chemical DDT. Falconers also raised concerns about decreasing numbers of golden eagles and were even able to advocate for the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1972 to cover migratory raptors. An additional 32 families of birds were protected with the landmark new law. This piece of federal legislation has since been amended multiple times to cover different raptor species.

“There’s been some misunderstandings about falconry that have led to some conflicts with the community and various advocacy groups, but they haven’t ever been that big of a deal,” says John Goodell, the executive director of the historical repository Archives of Falconry. “Unlike [some] mammals, raptors actually tend to thrive in captivity. They usually double their lifespan in captivity, just because there are so many things that can kill a raptor in the wild.”

In the States, those who pursue this unique trade and tradition must learn and pass an advanced test that encompasses raptor biology, ecology, and natural history. They then have to complete a two-year apprenticeship. Apprentices can work with captive-bred raptors for both hunting and abatement, as long as they are working under a license. 

One of the boardwalk falconers, an Ocean City local named Mark Quinnette, is fulfilling a childhood dream of becoming a falconer. A lifelong surfer and former manager at 7th Street Surf Shop, he taught Swanson how to ride Ocean City’s waves, while Swanson taught him about falconry. Quinnette soon became Swanson’s apprentice and is now an East Coast Falcons employee. When he is not patrolling the boardwalk in the summer with Ozzy or Diambi, Mark hunts in the winter with his own red-tailed hawk named Awilda Rose.

While a red-tailed hawk’s strong talons (up to 1.33 inches long) and heavy wingbeats might seem intimidating, training a raptor is similar in method to drilling commands with a pet or even teaching behavior to a toddler. It uses the basic psychological principles of operant conditioning, which relies on positive reinforcement and food rewards to modify behavior. With raptors, however, there is a much smaller margin of error than with dogs. “You can’t be negative with them at all because they’ll just see you automatically as an enemy or a challenge,” explains Quinette.

Typically, the more positive reinforcement with meaty treats, the better trained the animal will be. It takes about three weeks to a month for a falconer to train a raptor to respond to their instructions.

The fierce bouncers on the Ocean City boardwalk have been drilled to make their presence known, not felt. This means that there’s little combat in the air—strictly because the gulls won’t venture close. Instead of attacking or killing the gulls, the raptors use their presence to push them away from particular areas. The trainees learn very quickly that their human is a better source for a satisfying meal than anything they might encounter on their rounds. 

Last summer, the team adopted a new approach whereby they started to introduce the raptors a little earlier in the season and in the morning when there is less gull activity. Since then, the younger gulls in particular learned rather quickly that there were predators in the area and would move out to the bay on the western side of the island. As more people hit the boardwalk and beaches in the early afternoon with their food, and gull activity increased, the falcons, hawks, and owls would go on patrol.

“They’re just really big and powerful birds, and they know their routine. They fly straight down the boardwalk, and [the gulls] clear out,” says Quinnette. In the mornings, the hawks cover a smaller, more concentrated area and fly lamppost to lamppost or store roof to store roof. Meanwhile, the falcons on the lure circle in figure eights, dives, and stoops that are more similar to their hunting movements. 

The local avifauna can be heard warning each other when guards like Karen and Diambi are around. Ozzy the owl has the task of “putting the gulls to bed” with his nighttime patrol before the boardwalk closes. 

As a highly regulated and federally permitted abatement program, East Coast Falcons makes sure the boardwalk doesn’t become a gull graveyard. That said, accidents can happen. According to Swanson, about eight gulls were killed by one of his birds during the 2022 season. “You’re working with a wild animal, so anything is possible.”

“What East Coast Falcons is doing is industry standard,” Hawkins says. Bird-on-bird attacks can be concerning for both sides, she adds, but it’s up to the falconers to make sure their charges are safe. “We strongly encourage those [raptors] get annual examinations and some bloodwork to make sure that they are as healthy as they possibly can be.”

To prevent regular wildlife fatalities, falconers fly their birds as high as possible over the boardwalk and manage the raptor’s weight in the mews. “You keep it low enough that they’re still going to come to you, and high enough that they’re not crazy hungry and want to kill everything they see,” says Quinnette. Despite being on the offensive, the winged predators generally never attack humans or other animals. 

The falconers feed their birds a healthy natural diet of quail, mice, and rats. In the rare instance that one of the raptors doesn’t return, they use two different types of telemetry devices to track and retrieve them. 

Some of East Coast Falcons’ feathered staffers are spot trained, meaning that the falconers have taught them what path to take and will work with those specific locations. One gyr-Barbary hybrid falcon named Strawberry particularly likes the Flanders Hotel on 11th Street. She will cruise up from 6th Street, spooking gulls along the way, and perch at the hotel knowing that one of the handlers will come and get her with some tidbits of food in tow.

Another method the falconers use involves a lure—cord with an object tied to its end that usually resembles a prey animal. A falconer swings the tool around and pulls it away the second the bird goes for it. The bird then looks for the lure again and again. The flight pattern and talon positioning makes it look like the raptor is primed to attack. 

“We play games with the gulls,” Swanson says. “The gull believes that the falcon is actually hunting them. But then the falcon gets to where it [the gull] would be a really easy kill, [and] it’s not hungry enough. So it just turns off.”

That fear and avoidance is quite primal. Diambi is a gyr-saker hybrid. In the wild, saker falcons generally strike a death blow by hitting their prey at speeds of 150 miles per hour, while wild peregrine falcons in Ocean City can hit close to 300 miles per hour. Hawks and owls, meanwhile, use their talons to go in for the kill, squeezing the life out of their quarry with their grip. Red-tailed hawks like Awilda Rose can apply roughly 200 pounds of pressure; Eurasian eagle-owls like Ozzy apply about 700 pounds of pressure—equivalent to a wolf bite.

“There’s a respect for the fact that the animal can hurt you very badly, but is small enough to be handled,” says Hawkins. “When you handle them, you just feel the power of their muscles throughout their body.”

Flying the raptors high over the boardwalk to prevent unintended contact with a wild bird is also part of the team’s important task of keeping them healthy. “We take great pride in our birds and would hate to lose any to the bird flu,” says Quinnette. A global outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza has killed an estimated 58.79 million domestic birds in the US alone and possibly millions of wild birds, including raptors, over the past two years. More than 430 bald eagles and 22 endangered California condors have died from the disease in the US.

Nature will always win

As beach season heats up in Ocean City and tourists start to flock to the boardwalk, wildlife experts and falconers agree that humans, with all the ways they tempt gulls to act out of turn, are the true ecological problem.

“This is the real balance that I think that we have to have. How do we sort of keep problems at bay but at the same time give [the birds] space and resources to forage naturally?” asks Perlut, the ornithologist from the University of New England.

“Ultimately, it’s easier to train birds than humans,” says Quinnette. “[People] can fight Mother Nature all they want, but she’s ultimately going to win in the end. It’s just, at what cost?” 

After patrolling 10th Street beach, Quinnette brings Ozzy back to the mews and feeds him a tiny mouse. Back on the boardwalk, word seems to spread that the owl’s shift has ended. Some gulls begin to circle Manco and Manco, perhaps searching for an easy slice of pizza. 

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For centuries, a tale of the honeyguide bird and honey badger working together in some African countries to get into bees’ nests to get to their delicious honey and share the spoils has intrigued naturalists.  Finding real evidence of this symbiotic coexistence has been tricky—until now. A study published June 29 in the Journal of Zoology used almost 400 interviews with honey-hunters across Africa to find that the birds and badgers have in fact been teaming up.

[Related: Artificial intelligence is helping scientists decode animal languages.]

“While researching honeyguides, we have been guided to bees’ nests by honeyguide birds thousands of times, but none of us have ever seen a bird and a badger interact to find honey,” study co-author and University of Cape Town behavioral ecologist Jessica van der Wal said in a statement. “It’s well-established that honeyguides lead humans to bees’ nests, but evidence for bird and badger cooperation in the literature is patchy – it tends to be old, second-hand accounts of someone saying what their friend saw. So we decided to ask the experts directly.”

Residents of the 11 communities surveyed have spent generations searching for wild honey, including with assistance of honeyguide birds. Wild honey is a high-energy food that can provide up to 20 percent of a person’s calories.

Most of the communities in the survey had doubts that honeyguide birds and honey badgers help each other get honey, and 80 percent reported never seeing the two interact. 

However, responses from three communities in Tanzania stood out. Many people there reported seeing honeyguide birds and honey badgers working together to get beeswax and honey from nests. These sightings were most common amongst the Hadzabe honey-hunters, where 61 percent said they had seen the interaction.

[Related: Birds And Humans ‘Talk’ To Each Other To Outsmart Bees.]

“Hadzabe hunter-gatherers quietly move through the landscape while hunting animals with bows and arrows, so are poised to observe badgers and honeyguides interacting without disturbing them. Over half of the hunters reported witnessing these interactions, on a few rare occasions,” study co-author and University of California, Los Angeles, evolutionary anthropologist Brian Wood said in a statement.

In the study, the team built out the step-by-step process that must happen for honey badgers and honeyguide birds to work together.  Some of these steps, like a bird spotting and approaching the badger, were plausible. Other situations, such as a honeyguide chirping to the badger and the badger following the bird to a bees’ nest are unclear. Badgers are known for poor hearing and bad eyesight and these sensory issues are not ideal for following a chattering bird. 

According to the team, it is possible that only some populations of honey badgers in Tanzania have developed the skill sets needed to work together with honeyguide birds. Those skills are then passed among generations. Badgers and birds could also cooperate in more places, but haven’t been observed. 

“The interaction is difficult to observe because of the confounding effect of human presence: observers can’t know for sure who the honeyguide bird is talking to – them or the badger,” co-author and University of Cambridge behavioral ecologist Dominic Cram said in a statement. “But we have to take these interviews at face value. Three communities report to have seen honeyguide birds and honey badgers interacting, and it’s probably no coincidence that they’re all in Tanzania.”

In future studies, the authors highlight more engagement with communities, learning from their observations, and integrating cultural and scientific knowledge to enrich and accelerate research.

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Birds, often overlooked amid the hustle of daily life, grace virtually all of our surroundings. They play keen ecological roles as predators, pollinators, and seed-spreaders. Whether they fly above our heads or burrow below ground, many of these special creatures may be harmed by human activity and climate change, which some of the 2023 Audubon Photography Awards images aim to showcase. With a snap, click, and a whole lot of patience, the winners of this competition have captured the common and uncommon fliers around the world. 

To snap the grand prize shot, professional photographer Liron Gertsman traveled about an hour south of his home in Vancouver, Canada, to squat under a pier. There he focused his lens on a familiar pair of birds, rock pigeons, often seen scavenging for food in crowded cities. Pigeons, like the couple Gertsman found, stay together for life. With a portable Canon camera, the grand prize winner captured the piercing eyes and multi-colored feathers of the birds. 

Other competitors strayed farther from home, as distant as an Arctic cove, to snap shots of these warm-blooded animals in their habitats. They found wildlife as still as an Atlantic puffin quietly sitting on a cliff or as dynamic as a dunlin leaping by the waves. For more information and meaning behind each shot, visit the Audubon site, where you can check out the other winners and the video awards, too.

[Related: Wild birds don’t need your backyard feeders to survive]

[Related: Your state bird probably needs a makeover. Birder data is here to help.]

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This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine.

Just about anywhere you look, there are birds. Penguins live in Antarctica, ptarmigan in the Arctic Circle. Rüppell’s vultures soar higher than Mt. Everest. Emperor penguins dive deeper than 1,800 feet. There are birds on mountains, birds in cities, birds in deserts, birds in oceans, birds on farm fields and birds in parking lots.

Given their ubiquity — and the enjoyment many people get from seeing and cataloging them — birds offer something that sets them apart from other creatures: an abundance of data. Birds are active year-round, they come in many shapes and colors, and they are relatively simple to identify and appealing to observe. Every year around the world, amateur birdwatchers record millions of sightings in databases that are available for analysis.

All that monitoring has revealed some sobering trends. Over the last 50 years, North America has lost a third of its birds, studies suggest, and most bird species are in decline. Because birds are indicators of environmental integrity and of how other, less scrutinized species are doing, data like these should be a call to action, says Peter Marra, a conservation biologist and dean of Georgetown University’s Earth Commons Institute. “If our birds are disappearing, then we’re cutting the legs off beneath us,” he says. “We’re destroying the environment that we depend on.”

It’s not all bad news for birds: Some species are increasing in number, data show, and dozens have been saved from extinction. Understanding both the steep declines and the success stories, experts say, could help to inform efforts to protect birds as well as other species.

The bad news

On his daily walks at dawn along a trail that snakes by several reservoirs near his home in central England, Alexander Lees typically sees a variety of common waterfowl: Canada geese, mallards, an occasional goosander, a type of diving duck. Every once in a while, he spots something rare: a northern gannet, a kittiwake or a black tern. Lees, a conservation biologist at Manchester Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom, records each sighting in eBird, an online checklist and growing, global bird database.

Lees studies birds for a living, but the vast majority of those who track the world’s 11,000 or so bird species, either on their own or as part of organized events, do not. Hundreds of thousands of them participate each year in the Great Backyard Bird Count, launched by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society in 1998: For four days each February, people tally their sightings and the data are entered into eBird or a related identification app for beginners called Merlin.

The North American Breeding Bird Survey, organized by the US Geological Survey and Environment Canada, has enlisted thousands of participants to observe birds along roadsides each June since 1966. Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1900, encourages people to join a one-day bird tally scheduled in a three-week window during the holiday season. There are shorebird censuses and waterfowl surveys, all powered by citizen scientists.

This wealth of longitudinal recordings started to turn up signs of distress as far back as 1989, Marra says, when researchers analyzed data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey and concluded that declines were occurring among most of the species that breed in forests of the eastern United States and Canada, then migrate to the tropics.

Thirty years later, Marra and colleagues reassessed the situation using multiple bird-monitoring datasets from North America along with data on nocturnal bird migrations from weather radars. They found stunning losses. Since 1970, the team reported in Science in 2019, the number of birds in North America has declined by nearly 3 billion: a 29 percent loss of abundance. The paper used several methods for estimating changes in population sizes, Marra says, and “they all told us the same thing, which was that we’re watching the process of extinction happen.”

More than half of the 529 bird species assessed by the study have declined, the team reported, with the steepest drops in grassland birds, which have suffered from habitat loss and our use of pesticides. Declines are widespread among many common and abundant species that play important roles in food webs, Marra adds.

And it’s not just North America. In the European Union, a 2021 study of 378 species estimated that bird numbers fell by as much as 19 percent from 1980 to 2017. Data are scarcer on other continents, but reports are starting to chronicle concerns elsewhere, too. At least half of the birds that depend on South Africa’s forests have experienced shrinking ranges (with population trends yet to be assessed).

In Costa Rica’s agricultural areas, an assessment of 112 bird populations found more are declining than are increasing or remaining stable, according to a 12-year study of coffee plantations and forest fragments that was published in 2019. Meanwhile, at 55 sites in the Amazon, 11 percent of surveyed insect-eating birds have experienced shrinking ranks, some of them dramatically, over more than 35 years of tracking. Of 79 species on which there were enough data to compare historical and recent numbers in primary forests, eight have dwindled by at least 50 percent.

And in India, using citizen science data from eBird, a 2020 report estimated shrinking numbers in 80 percent of the 146 species examined — nearly half with declines of more than 50 percent. Overall, 13 percent of birds worldwide are threatened with extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List, a comprehensive source of information on the extinction risk of the world’s plant, animal and fungus species.

Recently, Lees and colleagues pulled together all the data they could find on the state of the world’s birds, publishing in the 2022 Annual Review of Environment and Resources. It was an attempt to, for the first time, synthesize research from across the world to create a comprehensive picture of global changes in bird abundance. “Looking across all taxa, there are big signals for declines everywhere,” Lees says. “There are some species which are increasing, but more species are declining than are increasing. In our attempts to halt the loss of global bird biodiversity, we’re currently not succeeding.”

Silver linings

Even as they reveal a downward slide, bird surveys offer some hopeful signs. Wetland species in North America have grown by 13 percent since 1970, according to the 2019 Science study, led by a 56 percent rise in waterfowl numbers. The paper credits billions of dollars allocated to the protection and restoration of wetlands, often for the sake of hunting. In India, 14 percent of assessed bird species have been growing in abundance. Those successes, scientists say, show that it is possible to reverse population declines.

There are plenty of examples of birds that have been saved from extinction by people, adds Philip McGowan, a conservation scientist at Newcastle University in the UK. To assess the impacts of conservation actions, he and colleagues made a list of bird and mammal species that were listed as endangered or extinct in the wild on the IUCN Red List at any point since 1993.

For each species, they collected as much information as they could about population trends, pressures driving the species to extinction, and key decisions or actions taken to protect them. Over daylong Zoom calls, small groups of researchers hashed out the details before everyone assigned each species a score indicating how confident they were that conservation actions had influenced the species’ status.

For some birds, the researchers were able to definitively link conservation efforts with species survival. The Spix’s macaw, for example, has continued to exist only because it has been kept in captivity. And the California condor clearly benefited from the ban of lead ammunition, as well as captive breeding programs and reintroductions, among other measures.

But for other species, there was less certainty. The red-billed curassow of eastern Brazil, for one, faces threats of habitat fragmentation and hunting. Protected areas intended to safeguard it aren’t always well enforced, making it probable but less clear that conservation has helped the species.

Overall, the researchers reported in 2020, as many as 48 species of birds and mammals were saved from extinction between 1993 and 2020 (McGowan says that is likely to be an underestimate). The number of extinctions, the calculations showed, would have been three or four times higher or more without human intervention.

Those findings should offer hope and motivation to help more species, McGowan says. “If we look at what has worked, we know that we can avoid extinctions,” he says. “We just need to scale that up.”

Forging ahead

In 2020, the year after Marra and colleagues reported a loss of nearly a third of North American birds, they partnered with several conservation groups to launch the Road to Recovery Initiative. The project has identified 104 species of birds in the United States and Canada that need immediate help and, of those, 30 that are highly vulnerable to extinction because of extremely small population sizes or precipitous declines.

For each species, Marra says, it will be important to learn what’s behind their shrinking populations. Currently, he says, “we’re not approaching conservation from a species perspective. And people are nervous about doing that … they view it as being just too difficult. But I maintain that we can figure it out, just like we’ve done with … all the species that almost disappeared because of DDT. We have the power and the understanding with new science and with new quantitative skills to identify the causes of decline and to figure out how we can eliminate those.”

It will take political will to set aside resources and enact widescale changes, such as reducing chemical use on farms, Lees says. Saving more birds, he adds, would ideally entail focusing as much energy on woodlands and agricultural areas as governments have allocated to wetlands, as well as implementing conservation measures well before the point where a species is about to disappear. “What we’re not succeeding at doing,” he says, “is stopping lots of species from getting rarer.”

Policies need to acknowledge the interests of local communities, adds McGowan. That’s a key focus of a new international agreement that was forged at the end of 2022, when representatives from 188 governments met in Montreal for the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15) and adopted a set of measures to stop biodiversity loss, restore ecosystems and protect Indigenous rights.

Involving local people can benefit biodiversity while respecting communities, McGowan says. In South America, for example, the yellow-eared parrot nearly went extinct, in part because people decimated palm groves, which are prime nesting habitats for the birds, to use the fronds in Palm Sunday processions. Successful conservation actions have included a community outreach campaign that encouraged people to stop cutting down wax palms and cease hunting the parrots. In 2003, the head of Colombia’s Catholic church halted a 200-year-old Palm Sunday tradition involving wax palms, and parrot numbers have since increased. “Working with local people meant that threat could be reduced,” McGowan says. Conservation, he says, should target the species that need action most urgently while ensuring that local people are not disenfranchised.

Better population estimates would help to inform conservation efforts, says Corey Callaghan, a global ecologist at the University of Florida in Davie. As it stands, wide margins of error are a problem, in part because estimating abundance is challenging and the sampling data are full of biases. Large birds are overrepresented in some types of citizen science data, Callaghan found in a 2021 study. And since contributors to the North American Breeding Bird Survey stand on the sides of roads in the daytime, Marra says, they miss nocturnal birds, marshland birds and birds that live in untouched landscapes.

Understanding and accounting for these biases could lead to better estimates, says Callaghan. In one example of how far off counts can be, total estimates of shorebirds called Asian dowitchers ranged from 14,000 to 23,000 — until a survey in 2019 tallied more than 22,000 of the birds on a single wetland in eastern China. Researchers can’t assess changes if they don’t have accurate baseline estimates, says Callaghan. To that end, he argues for more open sharing of databases and more integration of observations collected by researchers and citizen scientists. “If we want to preserve what we have around us,” he says, “we need to understand how much there is and how much we’re losing.”

As more data emerge, researchers urge optimism. “It’s really important not to have a doomsayer sort of position,” Lees says. Conservation has saved very rare species from extinction, he notes, and reversed declines in once-common species.

“Conservation,” he says, “does work.”

Amid the bad news, some bird success stories

Despite widespread signs of trouble, some birds are doing great.

Take, for example, the black-browed albatross, a seabird with a range throughout the southern oceans that encompasses Chile, Antarctica and Australia. Albatrosses like to hang around fishing boats and they often die after getting tangled up in baited hooks. But simple measures — like shielding hooks or putting colorful strings on fishing lines to scare the birds away — have dramatically reduced the accidental snagging of these birds in some places, including by more than 90 percent in South Africa. Today, some half a million pairs of black-browed albatrosses breed on the Falkland Islands alone, according to BirdLife International. Worldwide, there are 1.4 million mature adults, and numbers are growing.

The Cook’s petrel, a resident of New Zealand, is another seabird that has benefited from conservation measures — in this case, the eradication of rats, cats and other invasive predators from the bird’s small breeding islands. It is still classified as vulnerable because its range is small, but success of the birds’ fledglings has increased from 5 percent to 70 percent, and the population is rebounding.

In India, community outreach ended the unsustainable hunting of more than 100,000 Amur falcons each year, stabilizing what is thought to have been a rapidly declining population. And Kirtland’s warbler numbers rose from 200 to 2,300 breeding pairs after protections were enacted both in their breeding grounds in Michigan and their wintering grounds in the Bahamas. In 2019, the birds were removed from the US Fish and Wildlife Services endangered species list.

These and other stories of rebound and growth show that the actions we take can make the difference between a struggling species and a thriving one, says Alexander Lees, a conservation biologist at Manchester Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom. “There are lots and lots of exciting examples of success.”

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. Sign up for the newsletter.

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This article was originally published on Undark.

It could have been a scene from Jurassic Park: ten golden lumps of hardened resin, each encasing insects. But these weren’t from the age of the dinosaurs; these younger resins were formed in eastern Africa within the last few hundreds or thousands of years. Still, they offered a glimpse into a lost past: the dry evergreen forests of coastal Tanzania.

An international team of scientists recently took a close look at the lumps, which had been first collected more than a century ago by resin traders and then housed at the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Frankfurt, Germany. Many of the insects encased within them were stingless bees, tropical pollinators that can get stuck in the sticky substance while gathering it to construct nests. Three of the species still live in Africa, but two had such a unique combination of features that last year, the scientists reported them to be new to science: Axestotrigona kitingae and Hypotrigona kleineri.

Species discoveries can be joyous occasions, but not in this case. Eastern African forests have nearly disappeared in the past century, and neither bee species has been spotted in surveys conducted in the area since the 1990s, noted coauthor and entomologist Michael Engel, who recently moved from a position at the University of Kansas to the American Museum of Natural History. Given that these social bees are usually abundant, it’s unlikely that the people looking for insects had simply missed them. Sometime in the last 50 to 60 years, Engel suspects, the bees vanished along with their habitat.

“It seems trivial on a planet with millions of species to sit back and go, ‘Okay, well, you documented two stingless bees that were lost,’” Engel said. “But it’s really far more troubling than that,” he added, because scientists increasingly recognize that extinction is “a very common phenomenon.”

The stingless bees are part of an overlooked but growing trend of species that are already deemed extinct by the time they’re discovered. Scientists have identified new species of bats, birds, beetles, fish, frogs, snails, orchids, lichen, marsh plants, and wildflowers by studying old museum specimens, only to find that they are at risk of vanishing or may not exist in the wild anymore. Such discoveries illustrate how little is still known about Earth’s biodiversity and the mounting scale of extinctions. They also hint at the silent extinctions among species that haven’t yet been described — what scientists call dark extinctions.

It’s critical to identify undescribed species and the threats they face, said Martin Cheek, a botanist at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in the United Kingdom, because if experts and policymakers don’t know an endangered species exists, they can’t take action to preserve it. With no way to count how many undescribed species are going extinct, researchers also risk underestimating the scale of human-caused extinctions — including the loss of ecologically vital species like pollinators. And if species go extinct unnoticed, scientists also miss the chance to capture the complete richness of life on Earth for future generations. “I think we want to have a full assessment of humans’ impact on nature,” said theoretical ecologist Ryan Chisholm of the National University of Singapore. “And to do that, we need to take account of these dark extinctions as well as the extinctions that we know about.”

Many scientists agree that humans have pushed extinctions higher than the natural rate of species turnover, but nobody knows the actual toll. In the tens of millions of years before humans came along, scientists estimate that for every 10,000 species, between 0.1 and 2 went extinct each century. (Even these rates are uncertain because many species didn’t leave behind fossils.) Some studies suggest that extinction rates picked up at least in the past 10,000 years as humans expanded across the globe, hunting large mammals along the way.

Islands were particularly hard hit, for instance in the Pacific, where Polynesian settlers introduced pigs and rats that wiped out native species. Then, starting in the 16th century, contact with European explorers caused additional extinctions in many places by intensifying habitat loss and the introduction of invasive species — issues that often continued in places that became colonies. But again, scientists have a poor record of biodiversity during this time; some species’ extinctions were only recognized much later, most famously the dodo, which had disappeared by 1700 after 200 years of Europeans hunting and then settling on the island in the Indian Ocean island it inhabited.

Key drivers of extinction, such as industrialization, have ramped up ever since. For the past century, some scientists have estimated an average of 200 extinctions per 10,000 species— levels so high that they believe they portend a mass extinction, a term reserved for geological events of the scale of the ordeal that annihalated the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Yet some scientists, including the authors of those estimates, caution that even these numbers are conservative. The figures are based on the Red List compiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, or IUCN, a bookkeeper of species and their conservation statuses. As several experts have noted, the organization is slow to declare species extinct, wary that if the classification is wrong, they may cause threatened species to lose protections.

The Red List doesn’t include undescribed species, which some estimate could account for roughly 86 percent of the possibly 8.7 million species on Earth. That’s partly due to the sheer numbers of the largest species groups like invertebrates, plants, and fungi, especially in the little-explored regions around the tropics. It’s also because there are increasingly fewer experts to describe them due to a widespread lack of funding and training, noted conservation ecologist Natalia Ocampo-Peñuela of the University of California, Santa Cruz. Ocampo-Peñuela told Undark that she has no doubt that many species are going extinct without anyone noticing. “I think it is a phenomenon that will continue to happen and that it maybe has happened a lot more than we realize,” she said.

Studies of animal and plant specimens in museum and herbaria collections can uncover some of these dark extinctions. This can happen when scientists take a closer look at or conduct DNA analysis on specimens believed to represent known species and realize that these have actually been mislabeled, and instead represent new species that haven’t been seen in the wild in decades. Such a case unfolded recently for the ichthyologist Wilson Costa of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, who has long studied the diversity of killifish inhabiting southeastern Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. These fish live in shady, tea-colored acidic pools that form during the rainy season and lay eggs that survive through the dry period. These fragile conditions make these species extremely vulnerable to changes in water supply or deforestation, Costa wrote to Undark via email.

In 2019, Costa discovered that certain fish specimens collected in the 1980s weren’t members of Leptopanchax splendens, as previously believed, but actually represented a new species, which he called Leptopanchax sanguineus. With a few differences, both fish sport alternating red and metallic blue stripes on their flanks. While Leptopanchax splendens is critically endangered, Leptopanchax sanguineus hasn’t been spotted at all since its last collection in 1987. Pools no longer form where it was first found, probably because a nearby breeding facility for ornamental fish has diverted the water supply, said Costa, who has already witnessed the extinctions of several killifish species. “In the case discussed here, it was particularly sad because it is a species with unique characteristics and unusual beauty,” he added, “the product of millions of years of evolution stupidly interrupted.”

Similar discoveries have come from undescribed specimens, which exist in troves for diverse and poorly-studied groups of species, such as the land snails that have evolved across Pacific Islands. The mollusk specialist Alan Solem estimated in 1990 that, of roughly 200 Hawaiian species of one snail family, the Endodontidae, in Honolulu’s Bishop Museum, fewer than 40 had been described. All but a few are now likely extinct, said University of Hawaii biologist Robert Cowie, perhaps because invasive ants feasted off the snails’ eggs, which this snail family carries in a cavity underneath their shells. Meanwhile, Cheek said he’s publishing more and more new plant species from undescribed herbaria specimens that are likely already extinct in the wild.

Sometimes, though, it’s hard to identify species based on individual specimens, noted botanist Naomi Fraga, who directs conservation programs at the California Botanic Garden. And describing new species is not often a research priority. Studies that report new species aren’t often cited by other scientists, and they typically also don’t help towards pulling in new funding, both of which are key to academic success, Cheek said. One 2012 study concluded it takes an average of 21 years for a collected species to be formally described in the scientific literature. The authors added that if these difficulties — and the general dearth of taxonomists — persist, experts will continue to find extinct species in museum collections, “just as astronomers observe stars that vanished thousands of years ago.”

Museum records may only represent a fraction of undescribed species, causing some scientists to worry that many species could disappear unnoticed. For some groups, like snails, this is less likely, as extinct species may leave behind a shell that serves as a record of their existence even if collectors weren’t around to collect live specimens, noted Cowie. For instance, this allowed scientists to identify nine new and already-extinct species of helicinid land snails by combing the Gambier Islands in the Pacific for empty shells and combining these with specimens that already existed in museums. However, Cowie worries about the many invertebrates such as insects and spiders that won’t leave behind long-lasting physical remains. “What I worry about is that all this squishy biodiversity will just vanish without leaving a trace, and we’ll never know existed,” Cowie said.

Even some species that are found while they are still alive are already on the brink. In fact, research suggests that it’s precisely the newly described species that tend to have the highest risk of going extinct. Many new species are only now being discovered because they’re rare, isolated, or both — factors that also make them easier to wipe out, said Fraga. In 2018 in Guinea, for instance, botanist Denise Molmou of the National Herbarium of Guinea in Conakry discovered a new plant species which, like many of its relatives, appeared to inhabit a single waterfall, enveloping rocks amid the bubbly, air-rich water. Molmou was the last known person to see it alive.

Just before her team published their findings in the Kew Bulletin last year, Cheek looked at the waterfall’s location on Google Earth. A reservoir, created by a hydroelectric dam downriver, had flooded the waterfall, surely drowning any plants there, Cheek said. “Had we not got in there, and Denise had not gotten that specimen, we would not know that that species existed,” he added. “I felt sick, I felt, you know, it’s hopeless, like what’s the point?” Even if the team had known at the point of discovery that the dam was going to wipe it out, Cheek said, “it’d be quite difficult to do anything about it.”

While extinction is likely for many of these cases, it’s often hard to prove. The IUCN requires targeted searches to declare an extinction — something that Costa is still planning on doing for the killifish, four years after its discovery. But these surveys cost money, and aren’t always possible.

Meanwhile, some scientists have turned to computational techniques to estimate the scale of dark extinction, by extrapolating rates of species discovery and extinctions among known species. When Chisholm’s group applied this method to the estimated 195 species of birds in Singapore, they estimated that 9.6 undescribed species have vanished from the area in the past 200 years, in addition to the disappearance of 58 known species. For butterflies in Singapore, accounting for dark extinction roughly doubled the extinction toll of 132 known species.

Using similar approaches, a different research team estimated that the proportion of dark extinctions could account for up to just over a half of all extinctions, depending on the region and species group. Of course, “the main challenge in estimating dark extinction is that it is exactly that: an estimate. We can never be sure,” noted Quentin Cronk, a botanist of the University of British Columbia who has produced similar estimates.

Considering the current trends, some scientists doubt whether it’s even possible to name all species before they go extinct. To Cowie, who expressed little optimism extinctions will abate, the priority should be collecting species, especially invertebrates, from the wild so there will at least be museum specimens to mark their existence. “It’s sort of doing a disservice to our descendants if we let everything just vanish such that 200 years from now, nobody would know the biodiversity — the true biodiversity — that had evolved in the Amazon, for instance,” he said. “I want to know what lives and lived on this Earth,” he continued. “And it’s not just dinosaurs and mammoths and what have you; it’s all these little things that make the world go round.”

Other scientists, like Fraga, find hope in the fact that the presumption of extinction is just that — a presumption. As long as there’s still habitat, there’s a slim chance that species deemed extinct can be rediscovered and returned to healthy populations. In 2021, Japanese scientists stumbled across the fairy lantern Thismia kobensis, a fleshy orange flower only known from a single specimen collected in 1992. Now efforts are underway to protect its location and cultivate specimens for conservation.

Fraga is tracking down reported sightings of a monkeyflower species she identified in herbaria specimens: Erythranthe marmorata, which has bright yellow petals with red spots. Ultimately, she said, species are not just names. They are participants of ecological networks, upon which many other species, including humans, depend.

“We don’t want museum specimens,” she said. “We want to have thriving ecosystems and habitats. And in order to do that, we need to make sure that these species are thriving in, you know, populations in their ecological context, not just living in a museum.”

Katarina Zimmer is a science journalist. Her work has been published in The Scientist, National Geographic, Grist, Outside Magazine, and more.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

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But if you’re an animal lover determined to feed your local park’s residents, there are several healthy alternatives. Before you go stock up on snacks, though, always make sure you’re allowed to feed the critters in question—some areas’ rules are more lenient than others.

What to feed ducks (and other waterfowl)

The best advice we can give about feeding ducks (or other types of park fowl like swans and geese) is to imitate the types of food they naturally eat in the ponds and fields they call home. This means vegetables and nutritious grains work well, while processed “human” foods do not. Even though bread is typically made from grains, the breadmaking process renders it very filling with a relatively low amount of nutrients, two factors that can lead to malnourished ducks. Instead, try to stick with snacks that haven’t been highly processed.

For vegetables, the most important consideration is making sure that the bits and pieces you offer are small enough for waterfowl to handle. Ducks and their relatives aren’t great at chewing—while their bills help break down food, they don’t have teeth, at least in the traditional sense. Cut salad greens, vegetable peels, nuts, grapes, and other produce into small pieces before you toss them to these birds.

[Related: Why do ducks have orange feet?]

A bag of frozen mixed peas, corn niblets, and carrot pieces is one of the best options for waterfowl: these veggies are nutritious, affordable, and small enough for ducks to eat whole. Grains like oats, rice, and seeds make good waterfowl chow for the same reason. Even better, many of these little morsels will float on your local pond, keeping them easily accessible to ducks. Big chunks of food that sink to the bottom aren’t as useful.

If you’re looking to get fancy, you can also drop a couple more dollars on a bag of specially formulated waterfowl food. These pellets, available online or at your local pet store, are typically fed to pet birds and farm animals. These bite-size bits may not float on water, though, so test a few handfuls near the water’s edge before you start a feeding frenzy. This designer food may be best served up on the banks.

Other tips for feeding ducks

No matter how eager they are for a human-provided snack, your local park’s resident fowl are almost certainly not going to go hungry without you. Most ducks are perfectly capable of foraging for insects, plant life, and other nutrition sources on their own. That means you don’t need to feel bad if some of them miss out on the feast. In fact, overfeeding waterfowl can cause a host of problems, from teaching them to rely on human handouts to throwing off their natural nutritional balance. When in doubt, it’s better to stop feeding the birds sooner than you’d like than it is to feed them too much.

If you suspect a particular duck, goose, or swan may be unable to feed itself after you leave, it’s time to call in professional help. Waterfowl that live in parks are susceptible to a host of dangers from the human world, ranging from vehicle strikes to lead poisoning. Feeding them may be a temporary kindness, but it’s not a sustainable solution. If you see a bird having difficulty moving around or visibly in distress, contact your local wildlife specialists right away.

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On May 9, a baby California condor hatched at Liberty Wildlife, a wildlife rehabilitation, education, and conservation organization in Phoenix, Arizona. The hatching is a ray of hope and welcome good news for the struggling species that was only recently brought back from the brink of extinction. 

Only 22 condors were believed to be alive during the 1980s after a maelstrom of habitat loss, poaching, lead poisoning accidents with power lines, and the insecticide DDT. Currently, about 275 wild birds are cruising the skies about California, Utah, Arizona, and Baja California, Mexico, more than 160 are in captivity, and more than 400 live worldwide. 

[Related: Inside the Yurok Tribe’s mission to make critically endangered condors thrive.]

The largest bird species in North America and a crucial part of the ecosystem, California condors are considered sacred to many indigenous peoples. The Yurok Tribe of the Pacific Northwest call California condors “prey-go-neesh,” and say the birds have been tied to the Yurok Hlkelonah, or the cultural and ecological landscape, since the beginning of time. The tribe has officially been a driving force on condor reintroduction since 2008. 

Now, these sacred and important birds face a grave threat in the form of a tiny pathogen. Highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1), also called bird flu, is threatening condors at an alarming rate. It was first detected in the California condor in late March, and more than 20 are known to have died since. 

“It is scary particularly for endangered species like the California condors. It has the ability to wipe out an entire species,” Liberty Wildlife’s Animal Care Coordinator Jan Miller tells PopSci. 

One of the birds that succumbed to the disease was the new hatchling’s mother, part of a breeding pair of wild California condors. The mother was found acting suspicious in a cave near the Grand Canyon and was brought to Liberty Wildlife due to suspected bird flu. She died eight days later.  

“Using telemetry, it was assumed that she had laid an egg, probably between March 13 and March 17, and it was predicted to hatch between May 9 and May 17,” Liberty Wildlife’s Executive Director Megan Mosby tells PopSci. “The limited movement of the male led to the assumption that he was trying to incubate an egg.  The biologists at the Arizona Vermilion Cliff site decided that it wasn’t safe for the male, a known breeder, to attempt to raise a chick solo and feed himself, especially in a dank, cool cave … a perfect place for flu contamination.”

[Related: Spy tech and rigged eggs help scientists study the secret lives of animals.]

Biologists brought the egg back to Liberty Wildlife, where it was monitored in a structure called a brooder.  When the egg began to “pip,” the Los Angeles Zoo’s propagation team advised Liberty Wildlife on best practices for monitoring the hatchling’s progress. The team noticed that the chick was in the wrong position in the egg due to where it had pipped, or poked through its membrane, and that it would need assistance in order for the hatch to be successful. 

“Veterinarian Dr. Stephanie Lamb assisted in the freeing of the baby from the egg and the operation was successful.  After a health check, a swab to test for Avian Flu was obtained, and the chick was placed in an incubator with a surrogate (stuffed animal) ‘mother’ condor,” Miller says. 

The hatchling was negative for bird flu and continued to eat solid food and bond with her surrogate plush parent. According to Mosby, the team was excited to find out she was female because 11 of the 21 condors that have died due to bird flu were breeding age females.

On May 17, she was flown to The Peregrine Fund in Boise, Idaho. There she will be raised by foster parents so that she can one day be released back into Arizona’s skies.  

“At this age it is very easy for the chick to imprint on humans so getting her with her own species is critical to her releasability,” says Miller. “The Peregrine Fund has a very advanced propagation department with proven foster parents to help raise chicks for release into the wild. It is a very large operation with proven results.”

According to the team, vultures like the California condor are not only intelligent, but are incredibly necessary to help clean up the environment since they handle dead and decaying animals that can spread disease. 

“Vultures are part of the natural cleanup crew in nature. They deserve every fair chance they can get to continue to survive and be a part of this world,” says Miller. 

In addition to this welcome hatchling’s continued success this week, the United States Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service approved the emergency use of bird flu vaccine on May 16. The Yurok Tribe called this move, “a huge step in the effort to combat this virulent threat, but still a long road ahead.”

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It’s hard to imagine life without the nightshade family. It includes the likes of tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, and eggplants—some of the essential ingredients for a healthy diet–and delicious recipes. But, it turns out one of these tasty flowering plants has a longer history in North America than scientists previously believed. 

According to a March paper in the journal New Phytologist, the chili pepper may have been growing roots in present-day Colorado at least 50 million years ago—quite a bit earlier than scientists originally believed.  Previously, the chili pepper’s origin was placed 15 million years ago in South America. The newest theory emerged when a postdoc and an undergraduate student at University of Colorado-Boulder discovered a fossil of a plant that uncannily resembles the chili pepper, notably through its spiky ends on a fruiting stem called the calyx. 

“The world has maybe 300,000 plant species. The only plants with that kind of calyx is this group of 80 or 90 species,” Stacey Smith, senior author of the paper and associate professor of evolutionary biology at CU Boulder, said in a press release.

[Related: 5 heirloom foods that farmers want to bring back from obscurity.]

The well-preserved specimen was revealed in the Green River Formation, a site chock full of Eocene fossils and discoveries. But, it ended up not being as rare as the authors thought at first—two more similar chili pepper deposits from Green River were hidden in the CU Boulder collections and another at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. These fossils were uncovered in the 1990s, but it certainly isn’t unheard of for discoveries to lay in wait until the right scientists come along. 

The Green River Formation is a marvel for capturing the Eocene, which lasted from around 34 to 56 million years ago and marked the beginning of the era of mammals. During this epoch, the amount of carbon in the atmosphere was around double that of today, paving the way for palm trees to grow in Alaska and a lack of ice driving sea levels 500 feet higher than they are currently. 

So what could’ve happened that caused the gap between when chili peppers were evolving in Colorado and when they appeared in South America during the Miocene? The authors theorize that modern birds, which have been able to fly long distances for some 60 million years, could’ve carried seeds and plants in their poop or stuck to their bodies. 

Through birds, chili peppers would’ve made their way to South America. Since the latest discovery puts the evolution of chili peppers back to the days of Gondwana, transoceanic travel may have been unnecessary. Birds could simply fly across shorter watery distances or via a chain of volcanic islands, the scientists wrote in the new paper. 

[Related: Oldest evidence of digested plants in a roughly 575-million-year-old creature’s gut.]

Nevertheless, this discovery puts the oldest chili peppers in a place that no longer has many native nightshades or any chili peppers at all. “These chili peppers, a species that we thought arose in an evolutionary blink of an eye, have been around for a super long time,” Smith added. “We’re still coming to grips with this new timeline.”

So next time you break out a meal of Colorado-style chili, that bowl of goodness might have even more local roots that anyone realized.

The post The oldest chili pepper specimen may be from present-day Colorado appeared first on Popular Science.

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When entering into disaster scenarios, robots still have a major downside—their inability to recover when they inevitably crash into things. Scientists, however, have taken a page out of biology’s playbook, as they often do, to create a drone that can bounce back when met with various obstacles. 

Think of a bird landing on a tree branch—in order to do so, they likely have to collide with a few smaller branches or leaves in the process of touching down. But, their joints and soft tissues cushion these bumps along the way, and their feet are built precisely to lock themselves in place without straining a muscle. When a drone opts for a similar route, taking on a bunch of collisions on the way to their destination, it’s a little bit more dramatic. “They don’t recover; they crash,” Wenlong Zhang, an associate professor and robotics expert at Arizona State University said in a release. 

“We see drones used to assess damage from high in the sky, but they can’t really navigate through collapsed buildings,” Zhang added. “Their rigid frames compromise resilience to collision, so bumping into posts, beams, pipes or cables in a wrecked structure is often catastrophic.” 

Zhang is an author of a recent paper published in Soft Robotics wherein a team of scientists designed and tested a quadrotor drone with an inflatable frame, apparently the first of its kind. The inflatable frame acts almost like a blow-up suit, protecting the drone from any harsh consequences of banging into a wall or another obstacle. It also provides the kind of soft tissue absorption necessary for perching—the team’s next task.

[Related: Watch this bird-like robot make a graceful landing on its perch.]

After studying how birds land and grip onto branches with their taloned feet, the team developed a fabric-based bistable grasper for the inflatable drone. The grasper had two unpowered “resting states,” meaning it can remain open or closed without using energy, and reacts to impact of landing by closing its little feet and gripping hard onto a nearby object.

“It can perch on pretty much anything. Also, the bistable material means it doesn’t need an actuator to provide power to hold its perch. It just closes and stays like that without consuming any energy,” Zhang said in the release. “Then when needed, the gripper can be pneumatically retracted and the drone can just take off.”

A more resilient type of drone is crucial for search and rescue scenarios when the path forward may be filled with debris, but the authors could also see this kind of creation being useful in monitoring forest fires or even exploration on other planets.

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How well do you know your pets? Pet Psychic takes some of the musings you’ve had about your BFFs (beast friends forever) and connects them to hard research and results from modern science.

ONE AFTERNOON several years ago, a Moluccan cockatoo named Harpo arrived at Midwest Avian Adoption & Rescue Services in St. Paul, Minnesota. As Galiena Cimperman sat quietly with him and scratched his head, the bird started to talk.

This was perfectly normal. Harpo, like others of his species and the parrot family to which it belongs, was a very vocal creature and gifted mimic. Cimperman, the sanctuary’s executive director, was accustomed to him keeping up a semicoherent monologue of under-his-breath babble. But a long while after their first meeting, he shared something unexpected.

“I hate this bird,” Harpo said, loudly and clearly. He repeated it twice more. “I hate this bird. I hate this bird.”

Harpo had certainly heard that insult before, likely in unpleasant circumstances. But what did the cockatoo mean by it? According to Cimperman, the words didn’t have the same significance for him that they would for us; Harpo was repeating the sounds, not using them as language. But that doesn’t mean the outburst was insignificant.

Cimperman believes the phrase reflected traumas the cockatoo experienced earlier in life and that uttering them was part of his recovery. “I’m hesitant to say, because I don’t have any scientific backing on this,” she explains, “but I think he was probably working through stuff.”

Her diagnosis of Harpo—and many other residents of MAARS, one of 100 or so sanctuaries in the US that provide lifetime homes to abused and abandoned parrots—indeed comes without a seal of scientific approval. Although there’s plenty of research on parrot memory, problem-solving, and communication (the cognitive sophistication of some species is likened to that of human children), the birds’ emotions are largely unstudied.

That makes the relationship between parrots and people all the more difficult. The birds’ intelligence, physiology, and social nature often makes it difficult for them to flourish in captivity—yet there are more than 50 million parrots in households and zoos worldwide. Many are ultimately dumped at overwhelmed rescue operations, where volunteers like Cimperman have to piece together their pasts to help them find solace in the present.

As for whether the animals’ suffering can lead to psychological trauma—defined as an ongoing emotional response to an intensely distressing event—there’s even less research on that than on their feelings. But between their emotions and their excellent long-term memories, they do possess the cognitive capacities necessary to experience extended trauma.

One of the only scientific papers about parrot trauma, in fact, emerged from a collaboration between MAARS caretakers and Gay Bradshaw, the psychologist and ecologist best known for identifying PTSD in orphaned elephants who witnessed their parents and elders being killed. Presented more than a decade ago at a conference of avian veterinarians, the paper describes how parrots at the sanctuary frequently meet the criteria for the disorder.

What Bradshaw learned is that the birds undergo intensely distressing experiences, beginning in most cases at birth. Unlike parrots in the wild, whose parents provide close, attentive care from hatching through fledging, commercially bred individuals often start life in isolation. They receive little attention except for intermittent tube feeding.

“I really think their whole lives are, in some form or another, traumatic,” Cimperman says. “The way people raise them is completely absent of everything they should have.” In a review of standard commercial breeding methods, bird vet Michelle Curtis Velasco likened them to the infamous Romanian orphanages where, in the near absence of human contact, infants went on to develop severe behavioral disorders.

Then, at an age when their wild counterparts meet other young flock members while continuing to receive parental instruction, fledgling parrots enter a human home. They have evolved to live in large groups, but as pets, just one or a few often-absent people become their entire social world. These situations are intrinsically fraught; even well-meaning guardians may ignore or punish their parrots after tiring of unwittingly powerful bites and earsplitting cries for company. Sometimes keepers are not so well-meaning, and the situation devolves into full-blown abuse.

The birds are ill-equipped to cope, says Cimperman, and stress is magnified by helplessness and an inability to escape. Many parrots, especially the larger ones, either have their wings clipped to prevent flight or never learn to fly at all; they lack the sense of security that mobility provides.

Little wonder that some parrots arrive at MAARS with symptoms of severe psychological disturbance: tics like picking their feathers out and even wounding themselves, extreme aggression, hypersensitivity to everyday noises, repetitive movements, incessant screaming, constant agitation, catatonic unresponsiveness, and so on. In extreme cases, parrots have stayed in their cages for years, avoiding eye contact and trembling when humans approach.

When seen in people, those behaviors raise concerns about PTSD. “I know this hasn’t been borne out scientifically to the degree that it should be, but I don’t know what else it adds up to,” Cimperman says. So MAARS adapts insights on human PTSD into its treatment regime. New arrivals are initially kept separate from the flock; as they begin to acclimatize, grooming, eating, and showing curiosity about their surroundings, caretakers work with them to develop a sense of trust in humans.

It’s important that the birds feel control over their own lives, says Cimperman. “So much of a parrot’s life in captivity is without choice,” she says. “We try to give everyone a sense of free agency as much as possible, closer to what they would have in the wild.” Later they may be exposed to reminders of past trauma—the sight of a garbage bag, for example, for a bird delivered to the sanctuary inside one—as they learn to regulate their feelings. The process may take months or even years.

In Harpo’s case, the details of his early life are murky. He had one guardian before arriving at a sanctuary in Texas; there Harpo killed several birds and left volunteers with wounds requiring medical treatment, at which point MAARS took him in. “We couldn’t have him out for more than five minutes. He would just kind of implode and start flying at your face or attacking anything he could get his beak on,” Cimperman recalls.

By the time Harpo said, “I hate this bird,” she had worked with him for three years. He still had episodes when “he would just kind of blank out and kind of go into attack mode,” but he was improving. He felt safe around Cimperman, and she saw that utterance—delivered with the pinned-back feathers and slit-eyed glare that signify intensely negative feelings—as part of the process. To her, it signified a mental reenactment of his past. “I think they store a lot of stuff that’s happened to them. And to be able to move forward, there has to be some getting out of stuff,” she says.

Erin Colbert-White, a comparative psychologist at the University of Puget Sound in Washington who has studied how African grey parrots use words, says she’s open to the possibility that parrots experience PTSD. She cautions, however, that Harpo’s invective is difficult to parse as a recollection of his trauma because we don’t know the context in which he first heard the disparaging phrase. “It’s such a complex conclusion to draw that I would want to somehow be able to study it systematically. I’m not saying it’s not true. I would just have more questions. The scientist in me says, ‘Proceed with caution.’”

Colbert-White also warns that the expectation that another species will “experience psychological disorders in ways that humans do is a big assumption.” Rigorous, without-a-doubt scientific evidence may be unobtainable, though; it would require inflicting trauma on captive parrots in controlled conditions. “There’s no way to ethically reproduce these sorts of situations,” Colbert-White says.

Even granting that uncertainty, just the possibility that parrots experience psychological effects that resemble humans’ adds to the urgency of protecting them—not just in captivity, notes Cimperman, but also in the wild. Half of all parrot species are declining, and one-quarter are threatened with extinction, yet they receive relatively little conservation attention. Thriving populations are frequently persecuted for the wildlife trade or in the name of “pest management.”

By the end of Harpo’s life in 2021, nine years after his arrival at MAARS, he was one of the friendliest feathered guests there. He ran to greet people and was positively joyful. “I think who Harpo was and who he ended up being were completely different birds,” Cimperman says. “He was literally unrecognizable.” And whatever he’d meant when he said “I hate this bird,” he had stopped saying it.

Read more PopSci+ stories.

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Plenty of species have traits evolved for more than one purpose. Deer antlers are built-in weapons as well as seductive doe-magnets. Octopus suckers can trap prey in their suction but also taste and smell. Bright colors in frogs signal danger to predators while flaunting reproductive viability to potential mates. The Luna moth has uniquely shaped wings that thwart predation from bats, but what else might they be good for? How does one determine the evolutionary role of a trait? 

In two recent complementary studies published in Behavioral Ecology and Biology Letters earlier this year, researchers expanded our understanding of the adaptation by testing the role of wing tails against sexual selection and bird predation.

Luna moths are native to the Eastern half of North America. Like all silk moths, they have distinctive long, trailing tails on their hindwings, or “twisted, cupped paddles” as lead author of both studies and doctoral student at the Florida Museum of Natural history Juliette Rubin said in a statement. Bats use echolocation to detect the position of objects with reflected sound, but the moth’s wing shape reflects sound waves in a way that makes the flying mammals aim for the ends of their wings. In a flap of a wing, the moth just barely dodges their predators. 

[Related: What bats and metal vocalists have in common]

First, the researchers wanted to see if the wing tails also played a role in sexual selection. When female Luna moths are ready to mate, they perch in one spot and release pheromones. Males, with extremely sensitive antennae, can detect and follow a pheromone trail, according to the University of Florida’s entomology department. Then, the female has her pick of suitors. 

In the first experiment, researchers placed a female moth in a flight box with two males: one with intact wings and one with the wing tails removed. Initial data suggested that females preferred tails over no-tails, but further trials demonstrated otherwise. When researchers removed tails by clipping them, the resulting damage may have hindered these males’ performance in the first trial, allowing the intact males to mate successfully.

They recreated the tail/no-tail experiment by removing tails from both males, and re-gluing them to one male, while placing glue only on the hindwings of the other. Researchers found no significant difference in mating success between them. 

To ensure the glue did not confound the results, researchers conducted an additional experiment with two intact males, one with glue on the hindwings. Similarly, they had equal mating success.

Though their elegance is attractive to us humans, the experiment revealed that Luna moth wing tails aren’t the result of sexual selection. 

Then, researchers wanted to see if the moths’ tails had any obvious drawbacks. They help moths to survive bats, a species that relies on echolocation, but what about visually-oriented predators? 

Luna moths sit still during the day, since flying in broad daylight with their large bright green wings would make them easy targets. To test whether or not their tails would have any impact on daytime predation, researchers wrapped pastry dough around mealworms and molded them to the size and shape of real Luna moths. They attached full wings and wings without tails to each half. They placed the replicas around branches and leaves in an aviary, and introduced Carolina wrens. 

The wrens ate the fake moths at the same rate regardless of wing type, indicating that the tails had no effect on whether or not birds could locate them. Some research suggests that birds rely on search images, mental representations of objects, when they are searching for prey. They use visual cues, such as the shape of moth wings, to distinguish between the prey from patterns in the background. So, the wrens may ignore the hindwing tails, using the overall shape of Luna moths to identify food, according to the press release.

[Related: A new technique reveals how butterfly wings grow into shimmery wonders.]

These experiments show that despite being a noteworthy feature to humans, the Luna moths’ tails do not play a role in attracting a mate, nor do they affect predation by birds.

“When we see these really obvious physical features in animals, we’re often drawn into stories we’ve heard about them,” Rubin said in the statement. “A trait that’s obvious to us, as visual creatures, might not stand out to the predators that hunt them, and the traits that we think are dynamic and alluring might not seem that way to a potential mate.”

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Climate change has deteriorated the habitats of many migratory birds, permanently altering the timing of their expeditions. However, birds may be fighting back by changing their own plans. 

A study published April 11 in the journal Ecology finds that birds can partially compensate for these changes. They do so by delaying the start of spring migration and completing the journey faster, but this strategy does come with the cost of a decline in overall survival. 

“We found that our study species, the American redstart, can migrate up to 43 percent faster to reach its breeding grounds after delaying departure from wintering grounds in Jamaica by as much as 10 days,” co-author and Georgetown postdoctoral fellow Bryant Dossman said in a statement. “But increased migration speed also led to a drop of more than 6 percent in their overall survival rate.”

[Related: Migratory birds in the Eastern US are struggling to adapt to climate change.]

American redstarts breed in the trees and woodlands of southern Canada and the northeastern United States. They can lay two to five eggs at a time and both parents feed their young. According to the National Audubon Society, warblers like the redstart are often called ‘the butterflies of the bird world,’ for their ability to flit among treetops. The iconic redstart may live up to that nickname more than other warblers for its speed and colorful wings.

Some of the ways that birds like the redstarts can speed up the migration are by flying faster and making fewer or shorter stops to refuel. The speedier voyages  help compensate for the delayed departures, but can’t entirely make up for the lost time. According to the team on this study, individuals can recover about 60 percent of the lost time to a 10-day delay, but the birds will still be late to their breeding grounds. 

Jamaica, where some of the redstarts spend their non-breeding seasons, has become an increasingly dry climate in recent decades. The dryness means fewer insects, which are the mainstay of the redstart’s diet. It now takes the birds longer to get into the physical condition needed for the rigors of migration. Climate change is also causing the plants to bloom sooner and the insects to emerge sooner on the breeding grounds. 

“On average, migratory songbirds only live a year or two, so keeping to a tight schedule is vital. They’re only going to get one or two chances to breed,” said Dossman. “Longer lived birds are less likely to take the risk of speeding up migrations because they have more chances throughout their lives to breed and pass on their genes.”

The team from Cornell University, the University of Maryland, and Georgetown University used 33 years of American redstart migration departure data in tandem with automated radio tracking and light-level tags. They compared the birds’ expected departure date with their actual departure date to see how it has changed over time. 

[Related: Birds are so specialized to their homes, it shows in their bones.]

“Understanding how animals can compensate is an important part of understanding where the impacts of climate change will play out,” said co-author and Georgetown University biologist Peter Marra, in a statement.  “In this case, we may not lose a species entirely, but it is possible that populations of some species may go extinct locally due to climate change.” 

Activities at the redstart’s wintering grounds, such as not having enough food to eat, also carry over into the bird’s breeding season. While the redstart population is stable and increasing in much of its breeding range, eBird trend maps show that the species is declining in southern Quebec, Canada, and the northeastern US. 

“The good news is that birds are able to respond to changes in their environment,” Dossman said. “They have some flexibility and variation in their behaviors to begin with, but the question is, have they reached the limit of their ability to respond to climate change?”

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This article is from Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems.

Kit saw the ocean for the first time on an iron-skied February afternoon. My wife and I had spent the last three years in eastern Washington State, a region landlocked by 600 kilometers of forests, sagebrush, and wheat fields. For most of that time, we’d cohabited with Kit, an affectionate piebald mutt we’d adopted from a local shelter. Now we were moving to another inland environment—Colorado—via a circuitous road trip that took us through San Francisco. Our brief time in California, we realized, might be Kit’s first and last chance to lay her protuberant eyes upon the sea.

We drove to an ocean beach that some literal-minded city father had named Ocean Beach. I walked Kit onto the damp sand and watched her scrape at the stuff, as though trying to find its bottom. I unclipped her leash and Kit began to saunter, then run, one step ahead of the frothy surf, like a sandpiper. The wind pinned her floppy ears against her head, and she flung herself down to roll ecstatically in some dead washed-up thing. She looked happy; she looked free; she looked right.

In that, Kit wasn’t alone: most dogs love the beach. But the beach doesn’t love our dogs. A growing body of literature suggests that Canis lupus familiaris has become a significant force of disturbance along the world’s shorelines—not just the packs of feral dogs who roam some less regulated shores, but the domestic pooches whose well-meaning owners, like me, turn them loose for a romp in the sand. Dogs have been known to maul seal pups, outcompete eagles for dead fish, and dig up turtle nests. They save their worst harms for shorebirds, killing chicks, crushing eggs, and forcing migrating birds to burn more calories than they can spare. “Man’s best friend,” researchers concluded in 2011 with typical scientific understatement, “may not be wildlife’s best steward.”

In response to these harms, coastal managers have implemented leash laws, seasonal restrictions, and even outright dog bans. But limiting when and where our mutts can move invites controversy. After politicians enacted a partial dog ban on one Australian beach, aggrieved pet owners claimed that they’d become “criminals in [their] own backyards.” Others gripe that even strict laws are rarely enforced: in San Diego, where beach dogs are subject to a passel of regulations, vigilantes seem to take perverse pleasure in videotaping scofflaws. While our pets are the nominal causes of these conflicts, however, the real culprits aren’t Akitas and Airedales, but us—and our mastiff-sized blind spots around our furry family members. The dogs, of course, are just being dogs.

When we think about destructive pets, cats come first to mind. Whether feral or free-range, cats are swift, silent assassins, responsible for the deaths of up to four billion birds and 22 billion mammals each year in the United States alone. Dogs, by contrast, seem more goofy than lethal, hilariously distant from their wolfish origins. (Does a Shih Tzu really strike terror in any other animal?) In The World Without Us, author Alan Weisman postulated that, should humankind abruptly disappear, cats would fare just fine. Dogs, however, would vanish alongside their people, unable to survive without their twice-daily bowls of kibble.

Yet dogs, the world’s most abundant carnivores, exert immense impacts in their own right. In Mongolia, they kill antelopes and gazelles; in New Zealand, they’ve hampered the recovery of imperiled kiwis. Australian researchers have shown they scare off enough animals to “cause a depauperate local bird fauna.” In Russia’s Lake Baikal, they once transmitted a deadly virus to freshwater seals.

In 2019, on a reporting trip to Tasmania, Australia, I heard a firsthand account that exemplified the dangers of dogs. One evening, I met up with the founder of a group devoted to safeguarding the colonies of little blue penguins that nest along the state’s north coast. As we watched penguins—stout as bowling pins, feathered in glossy indigo, plump with sardines—waddle ashore after several days at sea, the advocate outlined the measures he’d taken to protect his beloved birds. He had erected fencing along a coastal highway to keep them from wandering into traffic and cleaned hundreds of the birds after a tanker ran aground and befouled the beach with oil. Yet he felt powerless to save penguins from the domestic dogs that occasionally escaped their owners, wandered down to the beach, and, on stumbling upon such vulnerable prey, instinctively began to slaughter. (Even friendly dogs can kill: penguins are so easily stressed that “playing” with them can induce cardiac arrest.) The year I visited, six separate dog attacks on four colonies had claimed the lives of more than 250 penguins.

“We don’t have dog attacks in Tasmania—we have dog massacres,” the group’s leader, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal from local dog owners, told me. “It takes two to 10 minutes for a dog to kill 40 or 50 penguins.”

Granted, little blue penguins are uniquely easy victims; not even the fastest greyhound is likely to catch an adult gull or dunlin. But the mere presence of dogs is enough to send birds into flight: after all, what’s a poodle but an unusually curly-haired fox, coyote, or wolf? In Chile, scientists have observed dogs pursuing whimbrels, a graceful shorebird that probes mudflats with a long, curved bill. On Mediterranean beaches, dog walkers flush plovers from their nests far more often than humans alone, exposing eggs to predators and thermal stress.

“Certain dog owners seem not just to allow it, but to take their dogs to the beach so that they can chase birds,” says David Newstead, bird program director at the Texas-based nonprofit Coastal Bend Bays and Estuaries Program. “These are otherwise conservation-minded people.”

Hounding birds on the beach seems like a benign behavior, or even a wholesome form of play: picture a euphoric golden retriever, tongue lolling and paws kicking up sand, merrily dispersing a flock of terns into a summer sky. Yet even a few brief flights can have big impacts. On the Gulf Coast beaches where Newstead works, many shorebirds are migrants—red knots, piping plovers, sanderlings—who have come to Texas to refuel during epic transcontinental journeys. They spend their days alternately resting and gorging on marine invertebrates, a cycle that’s critical to building the energy stores that migration requires. Dogs disrupt this loafing and feeding, leaving birds less equipped to complete their voyages.

“Every time you’re forcing birds to fly down the beach, the gas tank is going toward empty,” Newstead says. “If they can’t take in more energy than they’re expending on that beach, they’re eventually going to leave. It’s functional habitat loss.” When Newstead gently reprimands dog owners, he appeals to analogy and sympathy: imagine you’ve just gotten home from work and want nothing more than to chill on the couch with a beer—and then a pack of barking dogs tears into the house and chases you outside, over and over again. “Sometimes they grudgingly put their dog back on a leash,” he says. “Sometimes they just say to hell with you.”

Dogs also disturb ecosystems in stranger, subtler ways. In the fall of 2020, Brooke Maslo, an ecologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, embarked on an ambitious study of how coastal scavengers dispose of carrion. She and her collaborators set out motion-activated cameras on beaches along the Jersey Shore, then baited each with three fish carcasses acquired from tackle shops. “They would always get a big kick out of it,” Maslo says. “‘What do you want 150 dead menhaden for?’”

Maslo’s intent wasn’t to study dogs—it was to monitor the wildlife that came to beaches to feed, from red foxes and raccoons to corvids and laughing gulls. Yet dogs inevitably appeared. Sometimes Maslo’s cameras caught owners dragging their pooches away from the dead fish or placing the carcasses back on the ground, presumably after prying them from their pets’ jaws. More often the dogs urinated or defecated around the menhaden, as though claiming the carrion as their own.

At first, Maslo admits, the constant canine presence was frustrating: here she was, trying to document wild scavengers, and her cameras were clogged with domestic ones instead. As she watched more videos, though, a pattern emerged: When dogs appeared during the day, other scavengers steered clear that night, likely scared off by the scent-marking of an apex canid. Raccoons, skunks, and grackles were completely absent from dog-infested beaches, and foxes, black-backed gulls, and ghost crabs were rare. Maslo and her colleagues observed last year in Scientific Reports that nocturnal scavengers took 34 percent longer to find the dead fish after dogs had come around and ate far smaller portions when they finally showed up.

Why does this matter? Coastal necrophages play a crucial and salutary role, consuming the dead and thus preventing beaches from being strewn with carcasses. What’s more, Maslo says, mobile scavengers like gulls distribute carrion across beaches, spreading out nutrients and thus supporting ecosystems—not unlike dying salmon gifting their nitrogen and phosphorus to the forests in which they spawn. By claiming beaches for their own, dogs inhibit this breakdown and dispersal. You might not find a dachshund particularly intimidating, yet our pets are creating landscapes of fear, monopolizing food sources, and disrupting life’s fundamental processes.

In fairness, coastal managers aren’t blind to dogs’ impacts. Not long after I visited Tasmania, the state government raised the fines for owners whose dogs entered penguin colonies more than 20-fold, a measure that dramatically reduced the rate of attacks. Still other beaches require dogs to be leashed, restrict the hours in which they’re permitted to run loose, or are altogether dog-free. Oregon, for instance, bars even leashed dogs from snowy plover nesting grounds between March 15 and September 15. After an off-leash dog killed a piping plover chick in Scarborough, Maine, in 2013, the town hired plover police to post signs and educate beachgoers about leash laws. “I was expecting to be getting a lot more negativity,” a plover cop cheerfully told reporters.

But Scarborough’s plover guards are more exception than rule—for when dog regulations arrive, controversy usually follows. Few people know that better than Karen Harper, a councilor in Saanich, a municipal district on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. For years Harper had fielded complaints from coastal homeowners who’d witnessed dogs harassing wildlife and people along Cadboro Bay, an inlet whose beaches lie within a federal bird sanctuary. Although Canadian law prohibited off-leash dogs in the sanctuary, Saanich’s own regulations permitted them. In early 2020, Harper, hoping to resolve the contradiction, formally requested that Saanich’s staff study dogs’ impacts and review its bylaws.

“And then,” she says, “all hell broke loose.”

Angry emails poured into the council: Saanich residents urged Harper to “stop wasting staff time,” called her concerns “unfounded and largely irrelevant,” and described her request as “bogus procedure.” (Other commenters applauded Harper for confronting the degradation of “precious and priceless natural areas.”) On Facebook, Harper says, residents derided her as a “dog hater,” though she’d long owned dogs, most recently a pair of German shepherds. One local had dog feces flung into her yard. The situation got so volatile that animal-control officers started going to the beaches in pairs.

Harper was grappling with a persistent conundrum in coastal management: we know a lot more about how dogs harm beaches than how to get people to rein in their pets. In one typical study, researchers in southeast Australia found that just one-third of dog walkers felt “strongly obliged” to leash dogs. “While wildlife protection is important to dog owners,” the scientists added, “greater importance is given to the benefits of unleashed exercise for dogs.” Per one survey, 85 percent of American dog owners consider their pets part of the family; no wonder we privilege our own animals’ happiness over the welfare of wild creatures.

Other scientists have sought the answer in one of humanity’s most powerful motivators: peer pressure. In 2018, researchers interviewed nearly 900 coastal dog walkers in Maine, New York, and South Carolina. People didn’t just let their dogs roam free to exercise and sniff other mutts, they realized, but because social and personal norms sanctioned it. To change the attitudes of dog owners, the researchers proposed modeling different behavioral norms. Perhaps a group of volunteers could parade Spot and Rex around on leashes, each dog outfitted with a vest that reads “This Dog Shares the Shore with Shorebirds.” Social media loves nothing so much as a puppy (well, aside from a cat); maybe #ThisDogSharesTheShore will someday go viral on Instagram.

Still, the most sure-fire solution to averting dog conflict is also the most draconian—an outright ban of even leashed dogs. “Canadians are theoretically compliant types, but if you have leash-only areas, people ignore it,” Harper says. “It’s kind of discouraging.” The temptation to let dogs run free may be irresistible; better, perhaps, to proscribe our pooches altogether.

Ultimately, it’s hard not to conclude that the furor over dogs is a red herring—for the real problem isn’t our mutts, but our cognitive dissonance. Just as we forgive the foibles of our human relatives, we ignore the casual harm wrought by our four-legged children. (“Sure, those other dogs might chase birds, but my Duke would never hurt a fly.”) Perhaps because our dogs’ behaviors are a direct reflection of us, we harbor the delusion that they’re under our control; I recently saw an off-leash collie take a healthy bite of a jogger’s butt, even as the animal’s owner yelled at her to stand down. We rationalize their misdeeds, overrate their training, prioritize their pleasure over other beings’ right to exist. Love is not only blind, it’s blinding.

Much though I believe in protecting the natural world from our pets, I’m as guilty of this myopia as anyone. Earlier this winter, a year after Kit experienced the Pacific Ocean, I took her skiing near our new home in Colorado—unleashed. For a few minutes she trotted beside me, sniffing scat and eyeing squirrels, and, as always, I felt joy to see her happy and stimulated. Then she veered into a jumble of windblown logs and scrabbled at the snow with her paws. I slogged over and dragged her away, but it was too late; she’d unearthed and killed a hibernating vole, soft and warm as a newborn’s cheek. I felt grief, then momentary anger at Kit, but it wasn’t her fault—she was merely doing what her ancestors had been bred to do. The responsibility was entirely mine.

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

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Watching a bird leap around on its crooked legs before it takes off into the air is kind of  like turning back the evolutionary clock and watching a theropod dinosaur. Numerous paleontologists believe that theropod group, which includes the spinosaurus, tyrannosaurus rex, and velociraptor, evolved into the birds we see on Earth today. This would make them the only dino-descendants that survived catastrophic extinction 66 million years ago.

Like birds, theropod dinos also laid eggs, and scientists are beginning to fill in evolutionary gaps by studying the shelly remains. A study published April 3 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) examined the calcium carbonate left behind in the eggs of a funky theropod called Troodon and found that the dinosaurs laid four to six eggs in communal nests. 

[Related: Newly found titanosaur eggs reveal dino nurseries once teemed with baby giants.]

Troodon was a carnivorous dinosaur over six feet long that lived in North America about 75 million years ago. It had some bird-like features, particularly its light and hollow bones, two legs, and fully developed feathery wings. However, the dinosaur’s relatively large size kept it from flying, but it likely ran very fast and caught prey in strong claws. 

Troodon females also laid eggs that are more similar in shape to the asymmetric eggs laid by  modern birds than to the round reptile eggs. Their eggs were blue-green colored like other theropod eggs, and they have been found half buried into the ground. The international team of scientists on this study believes that mother Troodons sat and brooded on them.

To learn more, the team examined the calcium carbonate left behind in some well-preserved Troodon eggshells. They used a method developed in 2019 called “dual clumped isotope thermometry.” 

With this technique, they could measure the extent to which heavier isotopes of oxygen and carbon clump together in carbonate minerals. Isotopic clumping is temperature-dependent, and the prevalence of this clumping helped the team determine the temperature at which the carbonates crystallized. The eggshells were likely produced at temperatures of 107 degrees Fahrenheit and then deduced down to 86 degrees, which is very similar to modern birds. 

[Related: A fossilized egg laid by an extinct, human-sized turtle holds a rare jackpot.]

The team then compared  the isotopic compositions of reptile egg shells (alligator, crocodile, and multiple turtle species) with modern birds (chicken, sparrow, wren, emu, kiwi, cassowary, and ostrich) to see if Troodon was closer to either birds or reptiles. Two different isotopic patterns were revealed. The reptile eggshells have isotopic compositions matching the temperature of the surrounding environment, since they are cold-blooded and form their eggs slowly. Birds leave a recognizable non-thermal signature in the isotopic composition, which is evidence of quick eggshell formation. 

“We think this very high production rate is connected to the fact that birds, unlike reptiles, have a single ovary. Since they can produce just one egg at the time, birds have to do it more rapidly,” study author and geochemist from Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany Mattia Tagliavento said in a statement. 

The team compared these results to the remains of Troodon eggshells and did not not detect the isotopic composition which is typical for birds. According to Tagliavento,  “this demonstrates that Troodon formed its eggs in a way more comparable to modern reptiles, and it implies that its reproductive system was still constituted of two ovaries.”

As a last step, the researchers combined their results with existing knowledge about body and eggshell weight and determined that Troodon only produced only four to six eggs per reproductive phase. They found this observation particularly notable because Troodon nests are typically large and have up to 24 eggs, so the team believes that this means they laid their eggs in communal nests. This communal egg nesting behavior is seen in modern day ostriches.  

“Originally, we developed the dual clumped isotope method to accurately reconstruct Earth’s surface temperatures of past geological eras,” study co-author, geochemist, and developer of the new thermometry method Jens Fiebig, said in a statement. “This study demonstrates that our method is not limited to temperature reconstruction, it also presents the opportunity to study how carbonate biomineralization evolved throughout Earth’s history.”

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Windows can be a death trap for birds—after all, their eyesight makes it difficult or impossible to distinguish between glass and clear flying space. Millions of birds crash into windows along their annual migratory paths and the collisions kill somewhere between 365 million to nearly one billion birds in the United States alone each year. 

Volunteers and scientists throughout the years have collected the fallen birds around the country every spring and fall to rehabilitate  injured birds and document the dead.  The bodies contain valuable scientific information, especially when they are compared over time.

[Related: How to help birds avoid crashing into your windows.]

A study published March 28 in the journal Molecular Ecology is helping scientists better understand the relationship between birds and the multiple microbes in their guts by using these unique specimens.

“In humans, the gut microbiome—the collection of bacteria, fungi, and other microbes living in our digestive tracts—is incredibly important to our general health and can even influence our behavior. But scientists are still trying to figure out how significant a role the microbiome has with birds,” co-author Heather Skeen, a biologist and research associate at Chicago’s Field Museum, said in a statement.

Different mammal species tend to have their own signature microbes living in their gut. The microbes help them digest food and fight disease, with evidence that these relationships can go back millions of years. Researchers have been finding that bird microbiomes likely play by a whole different set of rules.

“Bird gut microbiomes don’t seem to be as closely tied to host species, so we want to know what does influence them,” said Skeen. “The goal of this study was to see if bird microbiomes are consistent, or if they change over short time periods.”

Skeen focused on four common species of songbirds called thrushes, but there are dozens of species found throughout Chicago after crashing into the city’s buildings. She took samples from 747 birds over three years and included samples from the thrushes summer breeding grounds in Manitoba in Canada and the Midwestern states of Michigan and Minnesota.

To get inside of the bird bellies, she made a small incision into the abdomen to reach the bird’s intestines and squeezed out what was inside.  She then transferred bird poop from the intestines to specialized filter paper cards that preserve DNA. The genetic material was then sent away for bacteria classification. 

[Related: Puffy unicorn stickers could save millions of migrating birds each year.]

“Analyzing the bacterial DNA present in the poop allowed us to determine exactly what kinds of bacteria were present,” said Skeen. “It turns out, there were about 27,000 different types of bacteria present.”

The team looked for trends in the bacteria present across the whole sample, and found that the different bird species didn’t seem to have their own unique set of microbes—unlike mammals. Instead, time was the clearest link between the birds and the bacteria present in their microbiomes. Gut microbiomes had significant differences in the composition of the bacteria season to season and year to year.

The results suggest that bird microbiomes might have more to do with their environment than the inborn, consistent relationship that is seen in most mammal species. 

Shannon Hackett, associate curator of birds at the Field Museum and a co-author of the paper, says the museum has been scooping birds killed by buildings for 40 years and that this study helps show why museum collections are valuable for research

“At the time, people were like, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ But the fact that he’s been doing this for forty years means we have a unique opportunity to study birds across fairly short periods of time. We have more than 100,000 window-killed birds at this point, it’s an incredibly rich resource,” Hackett said in a statement. “And as technology evolves and new scientists like Heather come up, we broaden what we’re able to do with these resources.”

Some ways to help birds avoid crashing into your windows include using decals and films on them that are invisible to birds while also letting light in, supporting bird-safe buildings, and turning off interior lights at night.

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I was 8 years old when I first learned the term “goose egg” can be used to identify more than an unhatched gosling. It can also describe the welt that develops after the goose that laid those eggs chases you away from its nest and bites you squarely on the meaty part of your behind.

After this educational experience, I was extra cautious around this goose (it lived by my grandparents’ pond), but did not realize I had escaped relatively unscathed. Unbeknownst to me, every spring brings fresh reports of people being attacked by what would appear to be angry geese. Those attacks often result in bruises, cuts, concussions, and stitches, many of which are far more serious than a welt on the backside.

Fortunately, there have been no documented cases of a goose killing a human in the US, but the creatures still inspire fear—or at least caution—in the hearts of many. There’s a reason cultures around the world have used geese in place of guard dogs.

But if you’d prefer to avoid being chased by a large bird as you stroll around the neighborhood park, follow this advice the next time you try to walk past a goose.

Why geese attack

Geese, like other animals, aren’t naturally aggressive—at least as humans generally define the word. These birds aren’t out to get upright bipeds; they have no particular vendetta that makes them want to bite soft young flesh or beat cyclists with their wings. Still, the animals will chase down just about anything: children, adults, bicycles, even cars, and frequently knock humans and other predators to the ground in impressive feats of agility and strength.

But when a goose lashes out, it’s not because it’s angry or mean. “Geese are typically only defensive when they have a nest they’re protecting or are defending their young,” says Vanessa A. Williams, a wildlife biologist and animal behaviorist who works with Wild Goose Chase, an Illinois-based company that specializes in wild bird management. “And they’ll attack anything they see as a threat to their nest or their babies.”

[Related: How birds of a feather flock together]

That’s because geese, unlike ducks, are monogamous—they mate for life and work with their partner to take care of their nest and babies. That means that while the female is incubating, the male is standing guard, ready to defend the nest and protect his mate. After the goslings hatch, he will fight to protect his whole brood.

If you look at the data, you’ll see most adverse human-goose encounters occur almost exclusively in the spring when nesting season begins and stop entirely by fall when goslings are fully mobile, WIlliams says.

Although goose attacks occasionally occur for other reasons, like if a goose or its mate is injured, this is rare, you can reduce your chances of getting rushed by one of these birds by simply staying away from their young and places you know they’re nesting.

How geese attack

Anyone who’s worried about getting chomped by a goose bill lined with tooth-like cartilage should know that according to Williams, my childhood encounter isn’t the norm. Geese rarely bite as a defensive strategy. Instead, they charge, using their strong wings as weapons.

I hear you: Bird wings may not seem all that threatening. After all, like most other birds that fly, the bones in goose wings are hollow. But because geese can weigh up to 25 pounds, the muscles in those wings are incredibly strong. They have to be to lift such a heavy bird into the air and carry it hundreds of miles at a time during migration.

So you really don’t want to be pummeled by those wings—they can quickly knock down a full-grown adult and cause scrapes, stitches, even broken bones. All of these injuries have been reported after goose assaults.

How to know when you might get attacked by a goose

But geese rarely go directly into blitz mode. They’ll warn you of impending doom first. If you get too close, they’ll hiss. Continue to approach and they’ll start honking, too. If you still haven’t left, they will spread their wings and charge. “If they hit you with one of those wings, it’s going to hurt,” Williams warns.

Fortunately, those initial warnings often lead to little more than a bluff charge as long as you respond by vacating the area as soon as possible. But how you do so matters.

Here’s what Williams advises: When a goose first lets you know you’re not welcome, start backing away—not slowly, but don’t run. If the animal stands down, you’re likely in the clear. If not, make yourself look large and menacing by holding your hands over your head or waving your backpack in the air. If you’re wearing a jacket, unzip it and hold it open, flapping the sides like wings. Keep facing the goose, because as long as you do, the animal will likely perceive you as a threat and do little more than bluff charge.

Whatever you do, Williams implores, don’t turn your back on the bird while it’s charging. You’ll make yourself an easy target, the goose may decide it’s safe to attack, and you might find yourself on the ground under a barrage of wings.

Instead, she says to continue backing away until the bird stops following you. When it does, you can turn around, but keep an eye on the goose to make sure it leaves you alone for good.

How to avoid an encounter with a defensive goose

If you’d rather avoid an encounter altogether—and who wouldn’t—the first rule of sharing space with wild animals is to keep your distance. How much depends on the bird. According to Williams, some geese will flee their nest immediately while others will start to feel threatened when you’re as far as 50 yards from them. So keep plenty of distance between yourself and geese, and the sooner you can create space between you and them, the better. And just generally be alert and listen for hissing.

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This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

Last fall, hundreds of birders rushed to Bryher, a tiny island off the coast of Cornwall, England. They came to see a Blackburnian warbler, a bird with a flaming orange throat and a high-pitched, trilled song. Blackburnian warblers are hardly ever seen in the United Kingdom—their home is 4,800 kilometers away in the pine forests of North America. Though they’re adept fliers, these birds typically overwinter in South America. So how did the bird get to Bryher?

Blackburnian warblers are small. Each weighs about as much as four pennies. It’s incredibly unlikely this vagrant warbler could have flown to Bryher under its own steam. Equally unlikely, says Roger Lederer, an ornithologist emeritus at California State University, Chico, is that the bird climbed eight or more kilometers into the sky and was blown off course by the jet stream. According to Lederer, this leaves just one possibility: the warbler took a boat.

Birds are often unexpected stowaways on ships around the world. Freighter crews have long told stories of sparrows and nightjars, owls, and herons settling on their boats’ decks, some for minutes, others for days. There’s video footage of a whole flock of starlings landing on a fishing boat in the North Sea. And after conservationists tagged a young osprey in Scotland, they watched with bemusement as the bird’s tracking signal showed its voyage to Spain involved riding on a cargo ship. The bird switched to a second vessel mid-journey before finishing the trip on its own.

The phenomenon has a name: ship-assisted migration. But few researchers paid much attention to how frequently birds hitchhike on ships—at least in a systematic way—until Maurizio Sarà took a month-long research cruise in the Mediterranean.

In 2021, Sarà, a zoologist at the University of Palermo in Italy, planned to observe dolphins, turtles, and other marine species. But he kept noticing terrestrial birds, like wagtails and wheatears, landing on the boat. He started keeping track. On average, he saw three birds arrive on the boat every day. Their median stopping time was 42 minutes but several stayed overnight. Extrapolating from his observations to the thousands of ships that travel the Mediterranean every day and the billions of birds that cross the sea during their migrations, Sarà estimates that as many as four million birds may be taking rest stops on boats during their spring migrations across the Mediterranean.

Something similar probably happens on other oceans as well, he thinks. Globally, some 4,000 bird species migrate, with many battling headwinds or storms as they travel thousands of kilometers. Where their voyages lead across oceans, the birds must go without water and food for long stretches. They rest on islands to refuel or wait out bad weather. Islands, however, are more scarce than boats.

Even counting only the commercial shipping fleet, around 90,000 ships are regularly crisscrossing the world’s waters. Sarà speculates that birds developed a new migration strategy for this modern era, one where they use the abundant freighters, tankers, and cruise ships as stepping stones on transcontinental flights. Even a short stop “can be enough to avoid the most tiring part of traversing a low atmospheric pressure cell, or to recover from the physiological stress that the migratory flight entails,” Sarà writes in the recent paper.

Alexander Lees, a conservation biologist at Manchester Metropolitan University in England who wasn’t involved in the research, says ship-assisted migration “is something that would be absolutely worth studying more.”

While Lees thinks Sarà’s estimate of four million birds using ships on their voyages across the Mediterranean is somewhat high, he has noticed that the Records Committee of the British Ornithologists’ Union, on which he sits, gets two or three reports a year that birds such as northern mockingbirds or brown thrashers have been sighted in the United Kingdom, even though they’re neither native to the area nor adapted for long-distance migrations. In about half of these cases, Lees says, the committee suspects the bird has arrived with the help of a boat.

It’s surprising how well birds can survive even entire ocean crossings on deck, Lees says. “Grain eaters tend to get handouts from people, such as crisps. And insectivores may find windblown insects. Raptors use the boat as a perch to hunt seabirds,” he says.

Every so often, this could allow a species to colonize a new region. The best evidence of ship-assisted colonization comes from a bird that doesn’t usually migrate at all: the Indian house crow. In recent years, so many of these birds stowed away on boats to the Netherlands from their native South Asia that they’ve established a breeding colony near Rotterdam.

None of this made the Blackburnian warbler on Bryher any less sensational. But there may come a day when the sight of a flame-throated bird on the island is much more common.

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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Over 60,000 years ago, an eagle relative with an almost 10 foot wingspan stalked the skies over southern Australia. Dynatoaetus gaffae (Gaff’s powerful eagle) had talons that could even snatch a koala or small kangaroo for dinner. The massive bird of prey was likely the largest continental eagle the world had ever seen. 

A study published March 16 in the Journal of Ornithology details how a team of fossil hunters from Flinders University in Australia put together this bird’s story. Four large fossilized bones were collected in Mairs Cave southern Australia’s Flinders Ranges  as far back as 1956 and 1969. The authors found an additional 28 bones scattered among the boulders in the site whoch helped them create a better picture of this giant extinct bird. 

[Related: This dragon-like reptile once soared over Australia.]

This now extinct raptor is closely related to Old World vultures that prowled Africa and Asia during the Pleistocene. In today’s fauna, its closest relative is likely the critically endangered monkey-munching Philippine Eagle. During the late Pleistocene Epoch, when giant megafauna like the mammoth roamed the Earth and ice sheets and glaciers were growing, Dynatoaetuswas likely the top avian predator on the planet. 

“It’s often been noted how few large land predators Australia had back then, so Dynatoaetus helps fill that gap,” said study author and Flinders University paleontologist Ellen Mather, in a statement.  “This discovery reveals that this incredible family of birds was once much more diverse in Australia, and that raptors were also impacted by the mass extinction that wiped out most of Australia’s megafauna.”

Dynatoaetus and another recently described smaller bird named Cryptogyps represent a new genera of raptors that are unique to Australia. 

“[Dynatoaetus] was humongous. Larger than any other eagle from other continents, and almost as large as the world’s largest eagles once found on the islands of New Zealand and Cuba, including the whopping extinct 13kg [28 pound] Haast’s eagle of New Zealand,” said Trevor Worthy, a study co-author and paleontologist at Flinders University, in a statement. 

[Related: Giant wombats the size of small cars once roamed Australia.]

Dynatoaetus also coexisted with the Wedge-tailed Eagle, a species that currently lives in Australia. The team says that this has interesting implications.

“Given that the Australian birds of prey used to be more diverse, it could mean that the Wedge-tailed Eagle in the past was more limited in where it lived and what it ate,” said Mather. “Otherwise, it would have been directly competing against the giant Dynatoaetus for those resources.”

Most of Australia’s eagles and vultures like the Dynatoaetus went extinct about 50,000 years ago, along with most of the continents’s megafauna.  One 2020 study found that a possible explanation is extreme environmental change and deterioration (loss of water, increased burning of trees and grass, etc.) that wiped out at least 13 super-sized megafauna species, including the world’s largest wombats and kangaroos.

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Camilla Rathsach walked along the lichen-covered sand, heading out from the lone village on Denmark’s remote Anholt island—a spot of land just a few kilometers wide in the middle of the Kattegat Strait, which separates the Danish mainland from Sweden. As Anholt Town’s 45 streetlights receded into the distance, moonlit shadows reached out to embrace the dunes. Rathsach looked up, admiring the Milky Way stretching across the sky. Thousands of stars shone down. “It’s just amazing,” she says. “Your senses heighten and you hear the water and feel the fresh air.”

This dark-sky moment was one of many Rathsach experienced while visiting the island in 2020 for work on her master’s thesis on balancing the need for outdoor lighting and darkness. Having grown up in urban areas, Rathsach wasn’t used to how bright moonlit nights could be. And after speaking with the island’s residents, who value the dark sky deeply and navigate with little outdoor light, she realized that artificial lighting could be turned down at night depending on the moon’s phase.

At Aalborg University in Denmark, she worked with her graduate supervisor, Mette Hvass, to present a new outdoor lighting design for Anholt’s church. Rathsach and Hvass picked the church for their project because it is a central meeting place for the community yet it currently has no outdoor lights. They thought lighting would make it easier for people to navigate but wanted to preserve the inviting ambiance of moonlight.

One of the guiding principles of designing sustainable lighting is to start with darkness, and add only the minimum amount of light required. Darkness and natural light sources are important to many species, and artificial light can be downright dangerous.

“Lights can attract and disorient seabirds during their flights between colony and foraging sites at sea,” says Elena Maggi, an ecologist at the University of Pisa in Italy who is not involved in the project. Anholt’s beaches host a variety of breeding seabirds, including gulls and terns, and the island is a stopover for many migrating birds. The waters around the island are also home to seals, cod, herring, and seagrass. Though scientists have made progress in understanding the effects of artificial light at night on a range of species, such as turtles, birds, and even corals, there is still more to learn.

“We still don’t know exactly how artificial light might interact with other disturbances like noise and chemical pollution, or with rising ocean temperatures and acidification due to climate change,” says Maggi.

The scientists’ final design for the church includes path lighting and small spotlights under the window arches, along with facade lighting under the eaves shining downward. To preserve the dark sky, path lighting would turn off on bright moonlit nights, and facade lighting would shut off on semi-bright or bright nights. The window lighting would stay on regardless of the moon’s phase.

The adaptive lighting cooked up by Camilla Rathsach and Mette Hvass would automatically adjust to the availability of moonlight, tweaking this church’s lighting automatically to balance visibility and darkness. Mock-ups show how the church would be lit under no moonlight (first) and a full moon (second). Illustrations courtesy of Camilla Rathsach

“The contrast between the moon’s cold white light reflecting off the church’s walls and the warm orange lights in the windows would create a cozy, inviting experience,” says Rathsach.

The moonlight adaptive lighting design project is part of a growing effort to balance the need for functional lighting in the town and to protect the darkness. Recently, the town’s public streetlights were swapped for dark-sky friendly lamps, says Anne Dixgaard, chairman of Dark Sky Anholt.

Dixgaard also organizes a yearly walk out to Anholt’s beach, where skywatchers can learn about the night sky. “People really value Anholt’s dark sky and want to preserve it,” she says.

Rathsach and Hvass are working on the moonlight adaptive design project in hopes that it will be implemented one day, but they still have some challenges to overcome. Moonlight is a relatively faint light source, so detecting it using sensors is challenging, and lights would need to adjust automatically on nights with intermittent cloud cover. Yet big initiatives often begin with small steps.

“This work is something new and unexpected,” says Maggi. “It’s a very interesting approach to mitigating the negative effects of artificial light at night.”

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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With their bright pink plumage, it’s always Wednesday for flamingos. As it turns out, that might not be the only thing they have in common with members of The Plastics from the 2004 movie Mean Girls.

The Caribbean and Chilean flamingos at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) Slimbridge Wetland Centre, in Gloucestershire, England might be even cliquier than one of cinema’s most famous girl groups. 

[Related: When humans and dolphins fish together, they both win.]

In a study appropriately published Wednesday March 1 in the journal Scientific Reports, a team of researchers analyzed the behavior of 147 Caribbean flamingos (Phoenicopterus ruber) and 115 Chilean flamingos (Phoenicopterus chilensis). They found that both species of flamingos tend to spend time with other birds with personalities similar to their own. The team says that this sheds new light on the complex nature of flamingo societies and can potentially help in management of flocks in captivity.  

“Our previous research has shown that individual flamingos have particular ‘friends’ within the flock,” said Paul Rose, an animal behavior specialist from the University of Exeter in the UK and study co-author, in a statement. “In this study, we wanted to find out whether individual character traits explain why these friendships form. The answer is yes – birds of a feather flock together.

They found that  flamingos with big personalities had stronger and more consistent ties with other bold birds, while more submissive flamingos hung out with other laid-back birds. For flamingos, “personality” was assessed by measuring behaviors like aggressiveness and willingness to explore the world around them.

“Like humans, flamingos appear to carve out different roles in society based on their personality,” said Fionnuala McCully, a PhD candidate and study co-author now at the University of Liverpool, in a statement. “For example, we observed groups of aggressive birds which attempt to dominate rivals and tend to get in more fights. Meanwhile, the role of submissive birds may be more complex than simply being lower down the pecking order – they may be using a different approach to get what they need.”

The variety in personality groups can provide help for their members, including supporting one another in some of the squabbles that occur in flamingo flocks, which McCully said are “many.”

There were some differences between the two flamingo populations. In Caribbean flamingos, birds of a certain personality type had a particular role within the group overall. The Chilean flock didn’t exhibit this, and the team is not quite sure why. A larger study of wild birds might also find this kind of pattern.  

[Related: Pig bystanders are pretty good at resolving anxiety and conflict in the pen.]

“Our findings need further investigation, both to help us understand the evolution of social behavior and to improve the welfare of zoo animals,” said Rose.  “But it is clear from this research that a flamingo’s social life is much more complicated than we first realized.”

Some other animals that tend to form friend groups based on personalities are chimpanzees, and Assamese macaques. Some dolphins even use one another as wingmen (or wing dolphins) in alliances for finding mates. Cliquiness in wild animals, afterall, isn’t reserved for the pinkest among them. 

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As far as birds go, the tiny, swift hummingbird is pretty in touch with color— they can see hues that we can’t imagine. Their feathers come in many shades as well, which is believed to help males find mates during courtship. Some females even use flashy feathers as a way to appear male to keep other birds from bothering them. 

They can be purple like the Lucifer hummingbird (Calothorax lucifer), a bright turquoise like Rivoli’s hummingbird (Eugenes fulgens), and the appropriately named pink-throated brilliant hummingbird (Heliodoxa gularis) is pink. Biologists are still figuring out the role of these colors and how they appear in hummingbird feathers. 

[Related: Hummingbirds get their wild coloring from ‘air-filled pancakes’ in their feathers.]

“I look out across the bird world for interesting colors and try to understand the physics of how those colors are being produced. With that knowledge, I could understand why some of these colors might be evolving more rapidly or why there might be more colorful species in certain areas of the world,” evolutionary biologist Chad Eliason from Chicago’s Field Museum tells PopSci. 

However, when a team of scientists found a normally pink throated Heliodoxa hummingbird that had a gold throat instead, they thought it was a completely new species. DNA revealed something else– the gold-throated bird was a never-before-documented hybrid of two pink-throated species.

The team describes this unique bird that they first encountered during field work in the isolated Cordillera Azul National Park of central Peru in a study published February 28 in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

“I looked at the bird and said to myself, ‘This thing doesn’t look like anything else.’ My first thought was, it was a new species,” said John Bates, a curator of birds at Chicago’s Field Museum and study co-author, in a statement. 

The team gathered more data using the museum’s DNA lab to confirm the surprise, and found that  it matched one of the pink-throated hummingbirds local to the area, Heliodoxa branickii (H. branickii) in some markers. Still, most hummingbirds don’t vary this greatly within their own species, 

[Related: Hummingbirds routinely hit 9Gs like it’s no big deal.]

The DNA sequencing looked at mitochondrial DNA–genetic material that is only passed down through the mother. The mitochondrial DNA provided a clear result that matched H. branickii.

When the team analyzed the bird’s nuclear DNA, which has contributions from both parents, it showed similarities to both H. branickii and a genetic cousin, Heliodoxa gularis (H. gularis). 

However, the bird wasn’t half branickii and half gularis. One of its ancestors must have been half-and-half, and subsequent generations then mated with more branickii birds.

In order to answer the question of how two pink-throated bird species ended up producing a non-pink-throated hybrid, the team had to look at the complex ways in which iridescent feather colors are determined. Pigments like carotenoids (red and yellow) and melanin (black) give the feathers their base colors, but the structure of the feather’s cells and the way that the light bounces off of them produces structural color. The result is color-shifting iridescence in the feathers. 

“We knew coming into this that [hummingbirds] had the most complex melanin structures or the iridescent structures of all birds,” says Eliason, who is also a co-author on the study. 

An electron microscope examined the subcellular level of the throat feather structure and spectroscopy to measure how light bounces off the feathers to produce different colors. Subtle differences were found in the origin of the hummingbird parent’s colors, which may explain why hybrid offspring produced such a vastly different color. 

“There’s more than one way to make magenta with iridescence,” Eliason said in a statement. “The parent species each have their own way of making magenta, which is, I think, why you can have this nonlinear or surprising outcome when you mix together those two recipes for producing a feather color.”

Sometimes hybrids are one-off occurrences or cannot reproduce like mules, but in other cases, they form new species. While it is not clear how common these kinds of hummingbird hybrids are, the team believes that they might contribute to the diversity of structural colors found across the hummingbird family tree.

They calculated that it would take six to 10 million years for this pink to gold color shift to evolve in a single species of bird, based on the speed of color evolution seen in hummingbirds. 

On an evolutionary time scale, six to 10 million years is pretty fast, according to Eliason. Further study will help them understand how many generations it takes for these strange changes to occur and apply some newer genetics and genome sequencing tools to older studies on hummingbirds.

The post This hybrid hummingbird’s colorful feathers are a genetic puzzle appeared first on Popular Science.

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Why spend all that time building and fine tuning robots that mimic birds when you can just…stuff robots in dead birds’ bodies? It’s hardly that simple, but  a recent project courtesy of Mostafa Hassanalian and their fellow New Mexico Tech colleagues put the peculiar idea to the test.

The team, who presented their work in late January at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ SciTech Forum, designed new systems reliant on taxidermy bird parts and artificial wing setups to mirror their (formerly living) avian inspirations. As New Scientist also highlighted on Tuesday, Hassanalian’s group technically built two dead bird bots—one fusing artificial body parts with an actual pheasant’s head and feathers, as well as a mechanical body combined with real pigeon wings.

[Related: Watch this bird-like robot make a graceful landing on its perch.]

The techno-taxidermy models, perhaps unsurprisingly, lag considerably behind their living counterparts’ maneuverability, speed, and grace. Currently, however, the feathery drones can glide, hover in place, and soar higher on hot thermal currents—just don’t expect them to do anything elegantly just yet, judging from video supplied to PopSci by Hassanalian.

The uncanniness of robot birds flying arount may not be much of an issue for the new designs’ potential usages, anyway. The research team’s paper notes that future models could hypothetically be used as “spy drones for military use,” although Hassanalian makes it clear in an email that this is far from its foremost goal of “developing a nature-friendly drone concept for wildlife monitoring.” Traditional drones are often disruptive to ecosystems due to issues such as sound and unfamiliarity, so developing quieter, natural-looking alternatives could help wildlife monitoring and research.

[Related: Reverse-engineered hummingbird wings could inspire new drone designs.]

Hassanalian also notes there are potential biological discoveries to be found in mimicking bird movement. For example, figuring out  how actual birds conserve energy while flying in V-formations or the role that feather colors and patterns may affect heat absorption and airflow.

Of course, any plans will require a bit more delving into the ethics and research guidelines for using deceased birds in future tinkerings. And before you ask—don’t worry. Hassanalian’s team worked with a nearby taxidermy artist to source the drones’ natural components. No real birds were physically harmed in the making of the drones. But it remains to be seen if any living animals will suffer psychologically from potentially seeing their cyborg cousins snapping spy photos of them one day.

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The crafty cockatoos have done it again. A new study published today in the journal Current Biology found that Goffin’s cockatoos, a bird native to Indonesia, carry multiple tools and customize their kits to whatever complex problem they are facing. “They are super flexible,” says Antonio Osuna-Mascaró, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna in Austria and lead author of the research study. “They can learn how to use tools by themselves, innovate the tool sets, and transport what they [specifically] need from them.” The findings cement Goffin’s cockatoos as one of the smartest creatures on Earth.

Goffin’s cockatoos have caught the eye of animal biologists for some time. These small white parrots are capable of delayed gratification, resisting the temptation of snacking if they know they’ll get a better reward for waiting. Captive and wild individuals show similar problem-solving behaviors and can assess a situation through different means. For example, Goffin’s cockatoos know whether an object is heavy or light just by looking at it. More recently, animal biologists have discovered that these birds can learn to create complex and multipurpose tool sets.

[Related: Adolescent chimpanzees might be less impulsive than human teens]

While Goffin’s cockatoos use clubs, picks, and other DIY instruments, they are not the first animals to do this. Elephants, sea otters, and gorillas use tools for several purposes such as to get food or create shelter. Chimpanzees, humanity’s closest living relative, go one step further. Osuna-Mascaró explains that chimpanzees use two different tools to go termite fishing: a thick and short one to open a hole in the termite mound and then a flexible one to collect the insects. The primates have also adapted their hardware to their situation. Sometimes they may only bring the probe to fish for termites because the mound already had punctured holes. 

To see if Goffin’s cockatoos could also be flexible in their tool use, the study authors created three scenarios similar to how chimpanzees wield multiple strategies for termite fishing.

1. Can cockatoos learn to use new tools?

The first experiment tested 10 captive cockatoos on their ability to innovate their tool set. They were given one sharp and pointy stick that would need to be used first to tear open a transparent paper membrane hiding a cashew, and then one long and flexible object that with a wagging motion could reach the nut behind the ruptured barrier. The study authors note this is the first time the individual birds had a tool with a function to puncture objects, so they would need time to explore the implement and then figure out how to use it.

The cockatoos had 10 minutes to figure out the solution. If they failed, they could try again the next day. A successful session was defined by the bird being able to reach the cashews in three consecutive days. 

Out of the group of 10, six cockatoos successfully got the nutty prize in three back-to-back sessions. Certain members caught on quicker than others. “Figaro is probably the most famous cockatoo in the world because he was the one who showed us in past research that cockatoos are able to make, modify, and use their own tools,” explains Osuna-Mascaró. “I was suspecting Figaro to struggle a little, so I was super surprised to see him solving the experiment in 31 seconds.” The highest socially ranked female in the group, Fini, was a close second. She finished the task in 34 seconds. 

2. Can cockatoos fits their tools to the situation?

Five cockatoos who passed the first task then moved on to the second experiment. This task tested the birds’ ability to use the tool set in different ways. The researchers randomly alternated the subjects between two boxes with two different courses of action. The first box had a membrane in which the cockatoos would need two tools to break open and retrieve the cashew. The second box had a membrane with holes already in it, so they would only need to use the long and flexible probe. 

The team kept track of which tool the birds wielded first and when they used it correctly. They found that cockatoos gradually learned and got better at choosing the correct instrument in every passing session. One reason for the birds’ high performance is because of their switching behavior between the tools, observes Osuna-Mascaró. When the parrots had to choose between the two objects, the study authors noticed a pattern where they would pick up one tool, release it, and then pick up the second tool before releasing it as well. This behavior was also seen in the first experiment, but it increased significantly in the second. 

Cockatoos who engaged in switching behavior were more likely to do better in selecting the correct tool option for the box they were in. Osuna-Mascaró’s team suggests several explanations. Moving between the two choices could help with the thought process when mulling over the best decision. Holding the tools could also help the birds recognize their functional properties and whether these features would help with the task at hand.

3. Can cockatoos tell when they need a whole toolkit?

The third experiment tested how flexible the species was at transporting the toolset. The task involved a platform holding two randomized two boxes (membrane or no membrane) containing the cashew. In the first phase, the cockatoos needed to either climb up or fly horizontally to a table holding the implements before flying vertically to reach the box. The study authors looked to see if the birds would consider these new circumstances and decide to carry along the tools together as a set in their beaks or talons. Bringing both objects at once would be energetically cheaper than having to fly back and forth.

What’s more, it provides a huge advantage in solving trickier problems, says Elizabeth Hobson, an assistant professor of biological sciences at the University of Cincinnati, who was not affiliated with the research. She says that a cockatoo having multiple tools on the go is like a human having an Allen key prepared in their pockets.

[Related: 7 creatures with skills that easily beat humans]

Out of the five cockatoos, four transported tools across the platforms and three did it consistently (Figaro included). The fifth bird never carried both tools together, though Osuna-Mascaró says this is likely because he is the strongest bird in the flock, so flying back and forth was probably not seen as labor intensive for him. 

“A tool set is more than the sum of its parts.” says Osuna-Mascaró. “Now we can argue that cockatoos have a mental representation of the needs the tool set has for them.”

Overall, Hobson think the experiments offer clearer details on Goff’s cockatoos’ cognitive prowess. “There are a couple things in this study that stand out,” she says. “It fleshes out more details about what the cockatoos are capable of in terms of tool use, and builds on recent documentation of tool use in this species in the wild.”

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With egg prices rising and concerns over food security increasing, some folks have taken a step toward self-sufficiency and opted to raise chickens in their backyards. Whether for meat or solely for eggs, having your own coop may be a great solution if you’ve been struggling to find ingredients for your breakfast omelet.

But tending a flock requires work, time, space, and above all, shouldering the responsibility of caring for the health and well-being of animals. It’s no joke. That’s why it’s important to know exactly what you’re getting yourself into before you welcome chickens into your life. 

“People see the adorable coops on social media and the cute fluffy chickens and it’s something they automatically want. But chicken keeping is work,” says Nikki Husted, author of the upcoming book Chicken Keeping Pure and Simple: A Fun, Friendly Guide to Backyard Chicken Keeping. 

[Related: Why you should build a swing for your chickens]

Husted, who’s also known to her almost 250,000 TikTok followers as @purelychickens, explains that there’s a learning curve to raising birds where you’ll be constantly troubleshooting and adjusting your caretaking techniques. The process can quickly become frustrating, which may be why some folks trying it for the first time at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic ended up giving up their chickens or even abandoning them. 

This is why it’s important to do thorough research before you set off on this new adventure. But don’t be discouraged: they’re very much worth it and not only for the food.   

“[Chickens] provide so much more than just eggs,” says Husted. “Not only do they give us laughs and companionship, but they have helped [me and my husband] teach our children about kindness and respect for animals.”  

“Chicken upkeep doesn’t take much time at all,” says Lisa Steele, author of The Fresh Eggs Daily Cookbook and fifth-generation chicken keeper. 

Once you’ve perfected your routine, it should only take about 10 minutes each morning and night to let the chickens in and out, feed them, and check for eggs. That’s it. This should be pretty easy if you’re working from home, but as long as you provide your birds with enough food and water, as well as a safe coop and run, there’s no need to have anyone supervising the flock during the day, she says. 

If you need to go somewhere for work, Husted recommends using large gravity feeders and five-gallon waterers. That way you won’t have to worry about your chickens starving if you run late at night. 

But you will have to worry about temperature in the colder months. “Eggs tend to freeze in the winter if you don’t collect them in a timely manner,” she explains. If that happens, the egg can crack, making it vulnerable to germs, and it’s as good as gone. 

For the coop, you’ll need to consider 3 to 4 square feet per chicken. This is especially important in the colder months when they’ll spend most of their time indoors, or if there’s not a large area for the run. And don’t forget about furniture. Yes, chicken furniture. Steele recommends a minimum of 8 inches of roosting bar per hen (they perch on it to sleep), and one nesting box for every 3 to 4 hens to lay their eggs. Keeping your flock entertained and stimulated is also a good idea, as bored birds can start pecking their roommates. For this, consider making your own chicken swing out of branches and rope.

All the sources we consulted for this story recommend getting a coop that can house more chicks than you actually plan on buying. If your flock outgrows its shelter or you end up purchasing more chickens, you’ll have to upgrade your setup, and that’s not only annoying, but can also get expensive. 

As for chicks, Steele says they can cost between $4 and $15 each depending on the breed. But high demand for the hobby has slightly increased prices in the past two years and made some varieties harder to find. 

The main other expense you’ll have is chicken feed. Amy Barkley, livestock and beginning farm specialist with Cornell University Cooperative Extension, explains that hens will eat about 1/3 pound of feed per day, which equates to a yearly cost of about $50 per bird. This calculation is based on 50-pound bags of feed, which Barkley says you should be able to find for around $20. But prices will vary depending on where you are and what kind of food you get—you’ll find varieties like GMO-free or organic can be slightly more expensive than generic. Steele says you can also reduce your feed bill by sharing some kitchen and garden scraps with the flock or allowing them to forage for grass, weeds, and bugs in the yard.

“The cost to keep chickens is relatively low, but the reality is that it’s still probably cheaper to purchase eggs from the store,” says Barkley. If you find that’s the case for you, you may want to reconsider your flock-keeping endeavors—and that is absolutely fine. 

“​​Breeds in this category are large-sized chickens that will lay well and are easy to manage,” she explains. These include Plymouth Rocks, Rhode Island and New Hampshire Reds, Orpingtons, Ameraucanas, and Leghorns. 

Then there’s the question of how to start: should you get chicks or fully grown hens? There are pros and cons to both approaches. With chicks, there are fewer things in the world cuter than a baby yellow fluff, they’re inexpensive, and raising them from a younger age will make it easier for them to get used to you. Familiarity will prevent you from sharing your property with some very aggressive tenants. 

On the downside, you’ll have to wait between 5 and 6 months before your chicks are old enough to lay eggs, and they need more equipment and care than older birds, including heat lamps, brooders, and chick dust. And then there’s the wild card factor: telling a chick’s sex is tricky, so even if you buy females, there’s still a 10 percent chance that you’ll end up with a rooster instead of a hen, says Barkley. That can easily become a problem, not only because they can be more aggressive than hens, but because some urban areas don’t allow keeping roosters because of noise concerns.

If you want to make sure your flock comprises egg-laying hens only, you can get ready-to-lay birds. But it’ll cost you—they can go for $20 to $50 each, more than three times as much as a chick from the most expensive breeds. Also, adult hens are more set in their ways, so you may get more than one less-than-loving peck every time you enter the coop.

If you have a pupper, getting them to peacefully coexist with your flock is not impossible, but it’ll highly depend on their breed, as some are genetically wired to hunt fowl. Knowing your pooch’s limits and slowly introducing them to your birds in a supervised environment will be key to helping them get along. Just keep in mind that it may never happen. In that case, providing a secure shelter and run for your flock is essential to protecting them.

Other than a proper roof, The Happy Chicken Coop, a website dedicated to providing information about backyard chicken keeping, suggests using wire mesh with openings no larger than a ½ inch for the bottom 3 feet of the fence around your run. 

“If you have a building that has a dirt floor, line the perimeter with cinder blocks or bury hardware cloth 12 inches below the ground to keep baddies from digging under the walls,” Barkley says.

Some counties and municipalities have people apply for permits, fill out applications, or pay a fee to set up a chicken coop on their property. They may also have specific requirements as to how big it can be and where it can be located. Sometimes they’ll even send inspectors to make sure everything’s in order. 

[Related: We don’t know what a happy chicken looks like, and that’s a big problem]

To save yourself money and trouble, check the requirements for keeping chickens in your area. You’ll usually find that information in your state’s or city’s health code or by asking the wildlife or parks department. Barkley also recommends reaching out to your local university’s extension office. In New York City, for example, the city’s regulations allow people to have hens, not roosters, in all five boroughs without a permit, but the coop and run have to be at least 25 feet away from the nearest building. 

If you live in a communal building or have close neighbors, informing them about your plans ahead of time can also help preserve the peace. Steele says that even if you only keep hens, they’ll still make noise, especially after laying, so you’ll need to be prepared if that becomes a problem. But the promise of fresh eggs delivered to their door may be enough to convince your neighbors. It might be a small price to pay to keep everyone happy. Especially your chickens.

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When confronted with predators, songbirds have more than just their fast and furious flight to protect themselves. Many perform a technique called mobbing, where large numbers of song birds aggressively gather around a bird of prey and rapidly fly while vocalizing loudly.

Mobbing does come with some risk, since birds of prey can still attack the mobbers. However, according to some new research, the songbirds do have an innate weapon for understanding these chances: they can use seasons and geography to tell when the risk from a common predator is highest so that they can increase mobbing behavior. If the threat is lower, they can ignore predators.

[Related: Why woodpeckers actually don’t need shock-absorbing skulls to headbang.]

The results of a study on how songbirds assess this risk when facing the northern pygmy owl is explained in a study published January 31 in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

“Mobbing must be energetically costly, because we find that it’s rare during winter, when food is scarce but there are still plenty of songbirds around,” said study co-author W. Douglas Robinson, a bird ecologist from Oregon State University (OSU), in a statement. “On top of this effect, the likelihood of mobbing also increased as the number of songbirds present increased, diluting the risk to each mobber. Thus songbirds can assess when the risk of predation from northern pygmy owls is highest and when there is safety in numbers.”

Northern pygmy owls are a small, day-time dwelling (diurnal) owl species found in western North America. They usually attack prey, such as songbirds and some small mammals, by ambushing them from a hidden location. The owls in this study were from western Oregon.

“The proportion of small birds relative to small mammals in the diet of the northern pygmy owl almost doubles from spring to summer, making birds the primary food source in summer,” said co-author and OSU graduate student Madeleine Scott, in a statement. “This is presumably because of the increasing availability of fledged offspring birds.”

In 2020 and 2021, the team played back recordings of a northern pygmy owl’s “advertising call” 663 times at 547 different locations of varying altitudes in order to provoke mobbing activity in the songbirds like Pacific wrens and others. They noted the number and species of songbirds that were present before and after each owl call and if the songbirds intensified their vocalizations, moved within 16 feet of the speaker, or showed any mobbing behavior in its direction.

Mobbing was observed in 8.1 percent of all trials. It peaked during the late summer and autumn when northern pygmy owls prey on young birds, when mobbing was behaved in 23 percent of the study’s trials. 

Mobbing was rare (only one percent of the trials) in the winter and spring. This is when the owls primarily eat small mammals, like shrews and moles. They also found that the likelihood of mobbing decreased with altitude.

Of the 24 species of songbirds engaged in mobbing, chickadees were the most frequent mobbers, followed by red-breasted nuthatches, Pacific wrens, and dark-eyed juncos. These small species are all on the owl’s dinner menu. 

[Related: These Songbirds Can Speak To Each Other Like Humans Do.]

On average, 12.8 songbirds flocked nearby the speaker when the owl calls were played back, and the likelihood of birds mobbing increased as this number became greater.

According to the authors, songbirds tend to follow a standard rule: only mob if the threat is real and if not, go about your birdy business. When the threat is real, mobbing will be beneficial, but only if there are enough songbirds nearby to dilute the risk.

“Future research questions should study how the energetic cost of mobbing impacts the frequency of the behavior. For example, examining seasonal food availability and supplementing with additional feeders could reveal how energetic considerations influence mobbing behavior,” said Scott.

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This article was originally featured on Undark.

“This is one of the least smelly carcasses,” said Todd Katzner, peering over his lab manager’s shoulder as she sliced a bit of flesh from a dead pigeon lying on a steel lab table. The specimens that arrive at this facility in Boise, Idaho, are often long dead, and the bodies smell, he said, like “nothing that you can easily describe, other than yuck.”

A wildlife biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, a government agency dedicated to environmental science, Katzner watched as his lab manager rooted around for the pigeon’s liver and then placed a glossy maroon piece of it in a small plastic bag labeled with a biohazard symbol. The pigeon is a demonstration specimen, but samples, including flesh and liver, are ordinarily frozen, catalogued, and stored in freezers. The feathers get tucked in paper envelopes and organized in filing boxes; the rest of the carcass is discarded. When needed for research, the stored samples can be processed and sent to other labs that test for toxicants or conduct genetic analysis.

Most of the bird carcasses that arrive at the Boise lab have been shipped from renewable energy facilities, where hundreds of thousands of winged creatures die each year in collisions with turbine blades and other equipment. Clean energy projects are essential for confronting climate change, said Mark Davis, a conservation biologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. But he also emphasized the importance of mitigating their effects on wildlife. “I’m supportive of renewable energy developments. I’m also supportive of doing our best to conserve biodiversity,” Davis said. “And I think the two things can very much coexist.”

To this end, Katzner, Davis, and other biologists are working with the renewable energy industry to create a nationwide repository of dead birds and bats killed at wind and solar facilities. The bodies hold clues about how the animals lived and died, and could help scientists and project operators understand how to reduce the environmental impact of clean energy installations, Davis said.

The repository needs sustained funding and support from industry partners to supply the specimens. But the collection’s wider potential is vast, Davis added. He, Katzner, and other stakeholders hope the carcasses will offer a wide array of wildlife biologists access to the animal samples they need for their work, and perhaps even provide insights into future scientific questions that researchers haven’t thought yet to ask.

In 1980, California laid the groundwork for one of the world’s first large-scale wind projects when it designated more than 30,000 acres east of San Francisco for wind development, on a stretch of land called the Altamont Pass. Within two decades, companies had installed thousands of wind turbines there. But there was a downside: While the sea breeze made Altamont ideal for wind energy, the area was also well-used by nesting birds. Research suggested they were colliding with the turbines’ rotating blades, leading to hundreds of deaths among red-tailed hawks, kestrels, and golden eagles.

“It’s a great place for a wind farm, but it’s also a really bad place for a wind farm,” said Albert Lopez, planning director for Alameda County, where many of the projects are located.

A 2004 report prepared for the state estimated deaths and offered recommendations that the authors said could add up to mortality reductions of anywhere from 20 to 50 percent. The most effective solution, the authors argued, involved replacing Altamont’s many small turbines with fewer larger turbines. But, the authors wrote, many measures to reduce deaths would be experimental, “due to the degree of uncertainty in their likely effectiveness.” More than a decade of research, tensions, and litigation followed, focused on how to reduce fatalities while still producing clean electricity to help California meet its increasingly ambitious climate goals.

While all this was happening, Katzner was earning his Ph.D. by studying eagles and other birds — and beginning to amass a feather collection halfway around the world. In Kazakhstan, where he has returned nearly every summer since 1997 to conduct field research, Katzner noticed piles of feathers underneath the birds’ nests. Carrying information about a bird’s age, sex, diet, and more, they were too valuable a resource to just leave behind, he thought, so he collected them. It was the start of what he describes as a compulsion to store and archive potentially useful scientific material.

Katzner went on to co-publish a paper in 2007, in which the researchers conducted a genetic analysis of naturally shed feathers, a technique that could allow scientists to match feather samples with the correct bird species when visual identifications are difficult. He later towed deer carcasses across the East Coast to lure and trap golden eagles in order to track their migration patterns. And today, part of his research involves testing carcasses for lead and other chemicals to understand whether birds are coming in contact with toxicants.

For the last decade, Katzner has also researched how birds interact with energy installations like wind and solar projects. During this time, studies have estimated that hundreds of thousands of birds die each year at such facilities in the United States. Thats’s still a small fraction of the millions of birds that at least one paper estimated are killed annually due to habitat destruction, downstream climate change, and other impacts of fossil fuel and nuclear power plants. But renewable energy is growing rapidly, and researchers are trying to determine how that continued growth might affect wildlife.

Bats seem attracted to spinning wind turbines, sometimes being struck by the blades while attempting to roost in the towers. Birds sometimes swoop down and crash into photovoltaic solar panels — possibly thinking the glass is water that is safe for landing. A separate, less common solar technology that uses mirrors to concentrate the sun’s rays into heat energy is known to singe birds that fly too close — a factor that has drawn opposition to such facilities from bird activists. But scientists still don’t fully understand these many interactions or their impacts on bird and bat populations, which makes it harder to prevent them.

In 2015, by then on staff at the USGS, Katzner and a team of other scientists secured $1 million from the California Energy Commission to study the impacts of renewable energy on wildlife — using hundreds of carcasses from the Altamont Pass. NextEra Energy, one of the largest project owners there, chipped in a donation of approximately 1,200 carcasses collected from their facilities in Altamont.

The team analyzed 411 birds collected over a decade at Altamont and another 515 picked up during a four-year period at California solar projects. They found that the birds originated from across the U.S., suggesting renewable facilities could affect far away bird populations during their migrations. In early 2021, Katzner and a team of other scientists published a paper examining specimens collected at wind facilities in Southern California. Their results suggested that replacing old turbines with fewer, newer models did not necessarily reduce wildlife mortality. Where a project is sited and the amount of energy it produces are likely stronger determinants of fatality rates, the authors said.

In the Altamont, scientists are still working to understand impacts for birds and bats, with a technical committee created to oversee the work. Ongoing efforts to replace old turbines with newer ones are meant to reduce the number of birds killed there, but whether it’s working remains an open question, said Lopez. Installing fewer turbines that produce more energy per unit than earlier models was expected to provide fewer collision points for birds and more space for habitat. And when new turbines are put in, scientists can recommend spots within a project site where birds may be less likely to run into them. But other variables influence mortality aside from turbine size and spacing, according to the 2021 paper authored by Katzner and other scientists, like season, weather, and bird behavior in the area.

On a small road in the Altamont, a white sign marks an entrance to NextEra’s Golden Hills wind project, where the company recently replaced decades-old turbines with new, larger models. Not far away, another wind project sits dormant — a relic from another time. Its old turbines stand motionless, stocky, and gray next to their graceful, modern successors on the horizon. The hills are quiet except for the static buzz of power cables.

Some conservationists are still concerned about the area. In 2021, the National Audubon Society, which says it strongly supports renewable energy, sued over the approval of a new wind project in the Altamont, asserting that the county didn’t do enough environmental review or mitigation for bird fatalities.

Katzner attributes his work in California with the beginnings of the repository, which he’s dubbed the Renewables-Wildlife Solutions Initiative. Amy Fesnock, a Bureau of Land Management wildlife biologist who collaborates with Katzner, simply calls it the “dead body file.”

In Idaho, Katzner has already amassed more than 80,000 samples — many drawn from the feather collection he’s kept for decades, and thousands more recently shipped in by renewable energy companies and their partners. Ultimately, Katzner would like to see a group of repository locations, all connected by a database. This would allow other scientists to access the bird and bat samples and use them in a variety of ways, extracting their DNA, for example, or running toxicology tests.

“Every time we get an animal carcass, it has value to research,” said Katzner. “If I think about it from a scientific perspective, if you leave that carcass out there in the field, you’re wasting data.”

That data is important to people like Amanda Hale, a biologist who helped build the repository while at Texas Christian University. She is now a senior research biologist at Western Ecosystems Technology, a consulting company that, along with providing other services, surveys for dead wildlife at renewable energy sites. Part of her new role involves liaising with clean energy companies and the government agencies that regulate them, making sure decision makers have the most current science to inform projects. Better data could assist clients in putting together more accurate conservation plans and help agencies know what to look for, she said, making regulation more straightforward.

“Once we can understand patterns of mortality, I think you can be better in designing and implementing mitigation strategies,” said Hale.

The initiative is not without its skeptics, though. John Anderson, executive director of the Energy and Wildlife Action Coalition, a clean energy membership group, sees merit in the effort but worries that the program could be “used to characterize renewable energy impacts in a very unfavorable light” without recognizing its benefits. The wind industry has long been sensitive to suggestions that it’s killing birds.

Several renewable energy companies that Undark contacted for this story did not respond to inquiries about wildlife monitoring at their sites or stopped responding to interview requests. Other industry groups, including the American Clean Power Association and the Renewable Energy Wildlife Institute, declined interview requests. But many companies appear to be participating — in Idaho, Katzner has received birds from 42 states.

William Voelker, a member of the Comanche Nation who has led a bird and feather repository called Sia for decades, says he’s frustrated at the lack of consideration for tribes from these types of U.S. government initiatives. Indigenous people, he said, have first right to “species of Indigenous concern.” His repository catalogs and sends bird carcasses and feathers to Indigenous people for ceremonial and religious purposes, and Voelker also cares for eagles.

“At this point we just don’t have any voice in the ring, and it’s unfortunate,” said Voelker.

Katzner, for his part, says he wants the project to be collaborative. The Renewable-Wildlife Solutions Initiative has sent some samples to a repository in Arizona that provides feathers for religious and ceremonial purposes, he said, and the RWSI archive could ship out other materials that it does not archive, but it has not yet contacted other locations to do so.

“It’s a shame if those parts of birds are not being used,” he said. “I’d like to see them get used for science or cultural purposes.” 

Many U.S. wind farms already monitor and collect downed wildlife. At a California wind facility an hour north of Altamont, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District tries to clear out its freezers at least once per year — before the bodies start to smell, said Ammon Rice, a supervisor in the government-owned utility’s environmental services department. The specimens that companies accumulate are often kept until they’re thrown out. Until recently, samples had been available to government and academic researchers on only a piecemeal basis.

There are many reasons why a clean energy company might employ people to pick up dead animals at its facility: Some states require companies to survey sites during certain stages of their development and keep track of how many birds and bats are found dead. Removing the carcasses can also deter scavengers, such as coyotes, foxes, and vultures. And the federal government has set voluntary conservation guidelines for wind projects; for some companies, complying with the recommendations is part of maintaining good political relationships.

Most of the time, human searchers canvas a project, walking transects under turbines or through solar fields. It’s “enormously labor intensive,” said Trevor Peterson, a senior biologist at Stantec, one of the consulting firms often hired to conduct those surveys. On some sites, trained dogs sniff out the dead bodies.

For years, conservation biologists have wanted to find a use for the creatures languishing in freezers at clean energy sites around the country. To get a nationwide project off the ground, Katzner started working with two other researchers: Davis, the conservation biologist at University of Illinois, and Amanda Hale, then a biology professor at Texas Christian University. They were part of a small community of people “who pick up dead stuff,” said Katzner. The three started meeting, joined by scientists at the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who helped connect the initiative with additional industry partners willing to send carcasses.

Building on Katzner’s existing samples, the repository has grown from an idea to a small program. In the last two years, it received about $650,000 from the Bureau of Land Management and earned a mention in the agency’s recent report to Congress about its progress towards renewable energy growth.

Davis had already been accepting samples from wind facilities when he started working on the repository. Often the bodies are mailed to his laboratory, but he prefers to organize hand-to-hand deliveries when possible, after one ill-fated incident in which a colleague received a shipped box of “bat soup.” To receive deliveries in person, Davis often winds up loitering in the university parking lot, waiting for the other party to arrive so they can offload the cargo.

“It sounds a lot like an illicit drug deal,” said Davis. “It looks a lot like an illicit drug deal — I assure you it is not.”

Recently, Ricky Gieser, a field technician who works with Davis, drove two and a half hours from Illinois to central Indiana to meet an Ohio wildlife official in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel. Davis arranged for Undark to witness the exchange through Zoom. With latex-gloved hands, Gieser transferred bags of more than 300 frozen birds and bats — lifting them from state-owned coolers and then gingerly placing them into coolers owned by his university. The entire transaction was over in under 15 minutes, but coordinating it took weeks.

Davis studies bats and other “organisms that people don’t like,” with a focus on genetics. He grew up in Iowa chasing spiders and snakes and now stores a jar of pickled rattlesnakes — a souvenir from his doctoral research — on a shelf behind his desk. Protecting these creatures, he said, is of extreme importance. Bats provide significant economic benefit, eating up bugs that harm crops. And their populations are declining at an alarming rate: A disease called white-nose syndrome has wiped out more than 90 percent of the population of three North American bat species in the last decade. In late November of 2022, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed Davis’s favorite species, the northern long-eared bat, as endangered.

For certain species, deaths at wind facilities are another stressor on populations. Scientists expect climate change to make the situation worse for bats and overall biodiversity. “Because of this confluence of factors, it’s just really tough for bats right now,” said Davis. “We need to work a lot harder than we are to make life better for them.”

Like other wildlife researchers, Davis has sometimes struggled to get his hands on the specimens he needs to track species and understand their behaviors. Many spend time in the field, but that’s costly. Depending on the target species, acquiring enough animals can take years, said Davis. He used museum collections for his doctoral dissertation, and still views them as an “untapped font of research potential.” But museums often focus on keeping samples intact for preservation and future research, so they may not work for every project.

That leaves salvage. Frozen bird and bat carcasses are “invaluable” to scientists, said Fesnock, the BLM wildlife biologist. So far, samples collected as part of the Renewables-Wildlife Solutions Initiative have led to about 10 scientific papers, according to Katzner. Davis says the collection could reduce research costs for some scientists by making a large number of samples available, particularly for species that are hard to collect. It’s difficult for scientists to catch migratory bats that fly high in the air with nets, making it challenging to estimate population levels. Bat biologists say there’s much we still don’t know about their behaviors, range, and number.

As scientists work to compile better data, a few companies are experimenting with mechanization as a possible way to reduce fatalities at their facilities. At a wind farm in Wyoming, utility Duke Energy has installed a rotating camera that resembles R2D2 on stilts. The technology, called IdentiFlight, is designed to use artificial intelligence to identify birds and shut turbines down in seconds to avoid collisions.

Prior to IdentiFlight, technicians used to set up lawn chairs amid the 17,000-acre site and look skyward, sometimes eight hours a day, to track eagles. It was an inefficient system prone to human error, said Tim Hayes, who recently retired as the utility’s environmental development director. IdentiFlight has reduced eagle fatalities there by 80 percent, he added. “It can see 360 degrees, where humans can’t, and it never gets tired, never blinks, and never has to go to the bathroom.”

Biologists say there are still unknowns around the efficacy of these types of technologies, in part because of incomplete data on the population size and spread of winged wildlife.

Katzner and his colleagues want the repository to help change this, but first they will need long term funding to help recruit more partners and staff. Davis estimated he needs between $1 and $2 million to build a sustainable repository at his university alone. Ideally, the USGS portion of the project in Boise would have its own building. For now, Katzner stores feathers in a space that doubles as a USGS conference room. Next door, in a room punctuated with a dull hum, the walls are lined with freezers. Some carry samples already cataloged. Others hold black trash bags filled with bird and bat bodies just waiting to be processed.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

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Earthlings, get ready for your closeups.

Close-up Photographer of the Year has revealed its fourth annual contest winners, and the results are a doozy. With 11 different categories, the Top 100 features everything from octopuses and Atlas moths, to trails of pheromones and the delicate cross sections of leaves.

The story behind the overall winner (seen above):

“Northern pitcher plants (Sarracenia purpurea) are carnivorous, allowing them to survive in nutrient-poor bog environments. Here there is no rich soil, but rather a floating mat of Sphagnum moss. Instead of drawing nutrients up through their roots, this plant relies on trapping prey in its specialised bell-shaped leaves, called pitchers. Typically, these plants feast on invertebrates—such as moths and flies—but recently, researchers at the Algonquin Wildlife Research Station discovered a surprising new item on the plant’s menu: juvenile spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum).

This population of Northern Pitcher Plants in Algonquin Provincial Park is the first to be found regularly consuming a vertebrate prey. For a plant that’s used to capturing tiny invertebrate, a juvenile spotted salamander is a hefty feast!

On the day I made this image, I was following researchers on their daily surveys of the plants. Pitchers typically contain just one salamander prey at a time, although occasionally they catch multiple salamanders simultaneously. When I saw a pitcher that had two salamanders, both at the same stage of decay floating at the surface of the pitcher’s fluid, I knew it was a special and fleeting moment. The next day, both salamanders had sunk to the bottom of the pitcher.”

– Photographer Samantha Stephens

The next entry period for the Close-up Photographer of the Year awards will open in March. But before you start prepping your cameras, get a little inspiration by scrolling through more of the recent winners below.

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It’s one thing to get a robot to fly like a bird, but it’s another thing entirely to get them to perch like one. There are a lot of factors to consider—including speed, timing, impact force, distance estimation, and balance, just to name a few. But judging from these recent photos and videos courtesy of Raphael Zufferey and their colleagues at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, a new bar has been set for ornithopters, aka bird-bots.

In an  interview with New Scientist, Zufferey explains that the trick to pulling off the stunning feat requires a few augmentations from actual avian behavior. Although the spring-loaded claw grasps a 6cm diameter branch much like its zoological inspirations, the final approach differs from its real-world counterparts. Generally, birds hover above their intended perch for a few moments before touching down. Zufferey’s invention, however, simply slows down as it nears its final destination using optical camera assessments, thus allowing the springed talons time to trigger within just 25 milliseconds, according to the team’s paper published with Nature Communications.

[Related: Flying snakes could inspire a new generation of airborne robots.]

The new ornithopter isn’t quite ready for outdoor use.  It currently only operates while “dependent on accurate localization data from a motion capture system,” according to the team’s research paper, and isn’t optimized yet for unpredictable environments. Once those problems are solved, however, researchers think the robot could offer novel alternatives to gathering samples in hard-to-reach locations, or even monitoring noise-sensitive animals in the wild for research purposes. Assuming said animals don’t mind a nosy mechanical bird hovering around them, that is.

In any case, animals are providing inspiration for all manner of advancements in robotics: from six-legged spider rovers set to soon roam Japanese sewer systems to waterborne robots that can now mimic manta rays for faster, lighter, and more energy efficient designs. Birds aren’t the only flying creatures robots can imitate, either. Flying snakes—yes, you read correctly—capable of flattening and undulating their bodies to propel through the air have inspired creative new movements for future bot designs.

The post Watch this bird-like robot make a graceful landing on its perch appeared first on Popular Science.

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This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

It is not yet 8:00 a.m., and the sun is already fierce on a small rowboat anchored a kilometer from the eastern banks of Thane Creek, an inlet separating the island city of Mumbai from the Indian mainland. A yellow cloth used as a reference point for scientists flutters in the line of mangroves along the shore. Behind the trees, tall buildings shimmer in a haze of pollution; in front of them, thousands of flamingos are gathering, flying in from nearby roosting sites. As the sun ascends, the tidal water in the creek’s lower reaches ebbs, exposing the mudflats that are the flamingos’ feeding grounds. The army of pink advances.

In the boat, Mrugank Prabhu unpacks his camera, sets up his telescope, and begins his count.

Prabhu is a scientist with the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), a 139-year-old organization involved in conservation and biodiversity research across India, which is leading an ambitious 10-year-long study to monitor a unique phenomenon. Every winter, thousands of greater and lesser flamingos fly into Mumbai, forming a sea of pink against a backdrop of skyscrapers, bridges, and oil refineries along the 26-kilometer-long Thane Creek. The seasonal gathering is a source of wonder in Mumbai, and also a bit of a mystery.

The flamingos only began visiting Mumbai in significant numbers in the 1990s. As the city grew in the 1970s and ’80s, so did the volume of untreated sewage flowing into Thane Creek, nurturing the algae that are the flamingos’ main food and turning the area into a feeding ground for the birds. Their numbers have increased in the past two decades, from at least 10,000 in 2007 to an estimated 130,000 this year.

The phenomenon illustrates the wealth and complexity of urban coastal ecosystems in India, say experts. Sometimes, “human impact results in conditions that seem terrible for nature at a glance, but are actually a gold mine for some species,” says Sunjoy Monga, a veteran local naturalist and BNHS member who has also led a study on Mumbai wildlife. “There is so much organic richness amid the gloom [of the city].”

Now, the flamingos are reshaping the ecological mindset of the city, too, showing what wildlife can do for conservation even in the most pressured environments. Flamingos have become a source of pride for locals. In the past few years, citizens have been holding annual flamingo-themed festivals and runs to raise awareness of local wetlands. In 2018, authorities designated almost 1,700 hectares of the creek and shore as a flamingo sanctuary.

Yet threats to these remarkable birds remain, including a bridge that is under construction across the lower reaches of Thane Creek where the water spills into Mumbai Harbour. The BNHS study—the first of its duration in urban India, paid for by regional planning authorities—aims to keep a check on the impacts of the bridge construction and other developments by monitoring the abundance and biology of the flamingos and the biochemical characteristics of the creek. Now at the halfway mark, the study is unearthing some surprises. Flamingos seem to be adapting to the bridge construction for the moment—they stay 500 meters or so from the construction site—but the same environmental shifts that helped draw the birds here in the first place are changing the mudflats in ways that could jeopardize their future.

Massive flocks of greater and lesser flamingos are often associated with the saline and alkaline lakes of Kenya and Tanzania. While greater flamingos can inhabit both saltwater and freshwater habitats, lesser flamingos are found in saline waters, and the species is considered “near threatened” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. India has the largest population of lesser flamingos outside the African continent, mostly in the salt deserts of the western state of Gujarat. There are few historical records of flamingos in Mumbai; one from 1891 suggests they were an occasional bird of passage in the region.

Today’s flocks are thought to come largely from breeding grounds in Gujarat, some 600 kilometers away. Six birds tagged with satellite trackers in March of this year migrated to that region after leaving Mumbai. Where else the birds might go will be revealed as BNHS scientists tag more flamingos in the coming years, says Prabhu.

In the meantime, thanks to leg-banding efforts by BNHS, scientists do know that some of the same birds come back to Mumbai year after year. After some flamingos discovered this fecally bolstered feeding ground, many more began coming. It’s as if they have place memory, says Prabhu.

The place, in this case, is bordered by a 400-square-kilometer port and nuclear facility to the west and high-rises and another port to the east. In between, some nature manages to thrive: an estimated 65 species of migratory birds are found in the Thane Creek mudflats, which stretch for seven square kilometers, and another 100 bird species live in the surrounding mangrove stands.

To estimate flamingo abundance, Prabhu and his team of eight sail out in their boats, using binoculars and telescopes to count birds along one-kilometer transects marked by colored flags tied to the mangroves. At the creek’s mouth, where it yawns to over several kilometers wide, the team members must row, each in their own rowboat, closer to shore just as the water is receding and the birds are arriving. This way, they can position themselves in the middle of the action, where they can get a reliable count. They wait there, marooned, for hours until the next tidal cycle.

Up close, the flamingos are no longer one mass of pink. It’s April and many of the lesser flamingos are young and still gray-white; they haven’t got their pink hue yet. The greater flamingos tower over the lesser, and although more abundant globally, are clearly fewer in number. What sounded like a cacophony of horns from a distance distills into individual calls that range from farting sounds to porcine oinks.

The birds feed relentlessly, stalking across the mudflats, beaks sweeping the ground, taking in the muddy water that will be parsed for food through their unique filtration systems. Greater flamingos feed on a variety of food including mussels, shrimp, and cyanobacteria—also known as blue-green algae—but lesser flamingos mainly eat cyanobacteria. Vast quantities of these cyanobacteria cover the Thane Creek mudflats, more than in other creeks around the state, says Reshma Pitale, a marine biologist who leads the BNHS team responsible for monitoring the water and soil along the creek. Cyanobacterial density also seems to increase after November, at the same time the flamingos start arriving.

The trend makes sense to Pawan K. Dadheech, a professor of microbiology at the Central University of Rajasthan and coauthor of a 2016 international study on the food of the lesser flamingo. Lesser flamingos prefer a particular type of cyanobacteria called Arthrospira, or spirulina, which requires alkaline water, he says. If Arthrospira is abundant in Thane Creek, monsoon rains would dilute the creek water, reducing its alkalinity and thus the amount of these cyanobacteria, he says. Yet, when the rains stop in September and the temperature rises, he says, “conditions will be favorable for the production of [cyano]bacteria, and especially Arthrospira.” The BNHS team’s tests should throw more light on this theory in the coming year.

It’s not just sewage-driven growth in food that’s helped attract flamingos to this area, however. Looking at satellite images of the creek, Prabhu found that mud deposition, which created the vast mudflats that host the flamingos, started increasing dramatically in the 1980s. The change was corroborated by older fishermen, who recalled being able to walk along a sandy shore for a great length of the creek in the 1970s and ’80s. The sand is gone now, replaced by mud. The mud deposition was probably due to construction debris and sewage from expanding urban development on the eastern banks washing into the creek during the monsoon, says Prabhu.

Along Thane Creek, other migratory wading birds may also have increased, although a few more years of data is needed to verify the trends, says Prabhu. Small waders are interesting, he adds, because their origin or destination is often a mystery. It’s unknown, for example, where precisely in the Arctic the little stint—an annual visitor at the creek—comes from. In June 2021, a curlew sandpiper, which breeds in Siberia, tagged here was spotted 4,500 kilometers away in Tianjin, China. In April, a common redshank that the BNHS team had banded in 2018 was spotted in Russia. The Mumbai region appears to be an important stop on the Central Asian Flyway, a migratory avian route between the Arctic and Indian Oceans, says Prabhu. Although this has likely always been the case, the study’s banding efforts—more than 15,000 birds have been tagged since 2018—should reveal more details about the birds’ migratory pathways.

Prabhu and his team will also be studying the flamingos’ breeding grounds in Gujarat in the coming year to find out if any factors are pushing them to seek food elsewhere. If there is a disturbance in the breeding habitat, is it possible that flamingos forced into Mumbai could eventually become year-round residents in the city rather than seasonal ones? That’s unlikely, suggests Prabhu, given the city’s intense monsoon and the pressures of a busy urban environment. “Breeding is a different ball game [than feeding],” he says. “[Flamingos] need a secure and secluded area with low disturbance, and lots of mud to build their mounds for nests.” With its low rainfall and remote location, the salt deserts of Gujarat provide a safer space for nesting.

In Mumbai, ironically, the mudflat habitat the flamingos depend on is now potentially threatened by excess mangrove growth, also fueled by nutrients from the sewage. Because the mangroves cannot expand landward into the city, they are growing into the creek, says Prabhu. Satellite studies show mangroves are shrinking the width of the waterway and potentially encroaching into the mudflats. Mangroves are known to be a vital shield against storm surge and sea level rise and also act as nurseries for fish; felling them was banned in the surrounding state of Maharashtra in 2018 after decades of legal battles to stem their destruction. But the ban also means that authorities at the Thane Creek Flamingo Sanctuary must now get permission from the courts to remove new growth.

The complexity of coastal and urban ecosystems challenges traditional understandings of conservation—including the value of sweeping rules—and highlights the importance of the BNHS study, says K. S. Gopi Sundar, a scientist with Seva Mandir, an NGO in Udaipur, India. “Urban ecosystems in India are … not well understood,” he says. Conservation approaches have often been adopted from the West or from forest management, where conditions are different, he adds. Bird diversity in Indian urban areas is often much higher than that in temperate countries, for instance. “We can’t manage our wetlands with a textbook from Europe.”

Coastal habitats are dynamic, influenced by both land and sea, adds Pitale. Soils and biodiversity in Thane Creek change upstream to downstream, tide to tide, and season to season. And if pollution has been good for the flamingos, it has been lethal for fish. The diversity of fish in the creek has crashed since the 1980s, from 22 species recorded in the early 1990s to 12 species found in a 2000 survey. The decline has been attributed to industrial pollution in earlier decades as well as the increased sewage and debris in more recent ones. Changes in the quantity and composition of mud may be changing the organisms on the mudflats, too.

In the past two years, Pitale and her team have observed a mysterious explosion of alien bivalves on the mudflats. “Will this change the community, will it outcompete other organisms?” says Pitale. “Anything can happen.”

On Earth Day, April 22, a small group of upper–middle class residents meet on a trail along a dense patch of mangroves in Navi Mumbai, the town on the eastern banks at the mouth of Thane Creek. This and nearby mangroves and shallow ponds provide roosting sites for the flamingos when high tide covers the mudflats. The residents, members of Save Navi Mumbai Environment, a citizens’ network to protect local mangroves and wetlands, introduce themselves and describe their path to environmental activism. Many of them were first moved by the destruction of greenery in their own backyards; one professional, who brought his young son along, says he got involved after losing a local pond to a development project. Another man says he and his wife traveled to Lake Nakuru in Kenya to see flamingos some years ago, unaware of their presence in his own city. “What fools we were,” he says.

After the meeting, Sunil and Shruti Agarwal, cofounders of Save Navi Mumbai Environment, take me up to their apartment, one of hundreds in the high-rises bordering the wetlands along the creek. From their 13th-floor balcony, you can see the mangroves that got them involved in environmental activism and, at high tide, the flamingos that brought others to their cause.

Soon after the Agarwals moved here in 2013, they challenged the clearance of land for a new housing project and golf course on these wetlands. Neighbors told them they couldn’t win—the project was promoted by a subsidiary of the powerful Adani Group. But in 2018, the Bombay High Court stopped the development, giving the couple their first big victory. Since then, they’ve been fighting against other development projects in nearby wetlands and raising awareness about local biodiversity. They roped in their son and daughter and their friends to help organize neighborhood festivals with games and activities for children, as well as an awareness-raising annual marathon called Run for Flamingos. At least 2,000 people participated in the event in 2020. “Nobody’s going to run for wetlands,” says the Agarwals’ daughter, Surabhi.

Authorities at the sanctuary, which is managed by the state forestry department, are also promoting restricted tourism around the flamingos, hoping to educate the public about the birds and their habitat. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, a new marine education center and flamingo boat rides attracted some 17,000 visitors annually, including busloads of school students, says Virendra Tiwari, the senior forest officer who oversees the sanctuary. The unit has an ambitious management plan for the sanctuary that includes increased security to prevent illegal construction, a big museum on the banks of the creek, and more boats for rides—but not so many that they would disturb the birds, says Tiwari. He is hoping that the sanctuary’s recent designation as a “wetland of importance” under the international Ramsar Convention will also limit the destruction of “satellite wetlands”—the roosting sites that fall outside the 16.8-square-kilometer sanctuary but are identified in the Ramsar designation as part of a much larger 48-square-kilometer buffer zone where only “wise use” is advised.

The pandemic suspended many of the sanctuary’s activities, yet it increased flamingo fever. In the 2020 lockdown, residents of Navi Mumbai were stuck at home with nothing to do but look out their windows and see thousands of birds roosting at high tide. The flamingos made a particularly spectacular showing that year, arcing across suddenly clear skies, says Shruti. Photos and videos of the flamingos went viral, including on international media.

The flamingo is a useful totem for local ecology—but, as the Agarwals have found, it can also be reduced to an empty symbol. Late last year, the local municipality tagged Navi Mumbai as Flamingo City, putting up statues of the bird on streets and painting murals on walls. But local agencies haven’t put an end to development projects on wetlands. If the government saves the wetlands, says Shruti, “I’ll be the first to dress up as a flamingo and stand on the road.”

Out on the mudflats with Prabhu, the sun is overhead and the tide is rising. The flamingos are strutting back to the shoreline, slurping up food as they go. As the water streams in, so does the detritus of the city—packets of chips, beer bottles, medicine boxes, and the odd flip-flop. Prabhu makes his last notes, packs up his scope, and brings out the oar, ready to paddle against the strong pre-monsoon currents. His tally for the day: 15,000 flamingos in his transect alone. All around, flamingos are lifting off, stretching out like pink hockey sticks, to fly back to their roosts. Their vivid flight is almost fantastical against the haze and high-rises. Mumbai’s flamingos are an accidental marvel, an inadvertent creation at the fragile intersection of the urban and natural worlds. Can the dynamic wetland habitat, with its competing human and ecological interests, sustain these birds in the years to come? The residents of this metropolis certainly hope so. For now, the flamingos offer a flash of unexpected beauty and hope amid gray skies.

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This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

Scientists in South Africa have found that ceramic nest boxes can shield endangered African penguins from climate change.

In the past, the seabirds laid their eggs in burrows dug into centuries-old layers of their own excrement. But in the 1800s, most of the guano was scraped up by traders and shipped to the United Kingdom as fertilizer. Since then, many penguins have nested in the open, exposing themselves to heatstroke and their eggs and chicks to desiccation and predators. Shaun Welman, a zoologist at Nelson Mandela University (NMU), has seen penguins sitting with eyes shut, heads drooped, and beaks agape in the punishing midday heat, struggling to protect their eggs.

Because penguins evolved to retain heat in frigid water, they can easily overheat on land. Typically, penguins leave their nests regularly to cool off in the sea, but without proper burrows, this leaves their eggs unprotected.

“We’ve now put this entire species at risk of extinction, essentially because of human exploitation and greed,” Welman says.

Since 1900, the African penguin population has fallen to a fraction of its former glory: a mere 48,000 birds, down from as many as three million.

Fortunately, a team of researchers and conservationists working under the banner of the African Penguin Nest Project seems to have hit on a solution. Over the past four years, the team has designed and deployed more than 1,500 handmade ceramic nest boxes in five penguin colonies including Bird Island, located in Algoa Bay, an area that is home to nearly half of the world’s remaining African penguins.

A new study coauthored by Welman shows that the ceramic design provides the best nests on Bird Island. The artificial nests are even cooler than the penguin’s own guano burrows, a tiny number of which still survive.

Welman and colleague Lorien Pichegru, the acting director of the Institute for Coastal and Marine Research at NMU, found that older artificial nests made of cement get too hot. Inside, temperatures at times exceeded 40 °C and occasionally even 50 °C, putting eggs at risk of overheating. In previous research, Pichegru also documented perilously high temperatures in artificial nests crafted from fiberglass.

But the new ceramic nests, made of two molded shells of gray fabric soaked in a ceramic slurry and fitted together to look like a tiny igloo, kept the birds cool.

The ceramic nests remained around 1 °C lower than a penguin’s resting body temperature of 37.6 °C, while humidity stayed above a comfortable 70 percent. The nests were so effective, Welman says, that “if adults had to abandon nests for whatever reason, the eggs would never be at any risk of overheating.”

Even in milder weather, the new nests make a difference. In a separate experiment, on a sunny 25 °C day, the African Penguin Nest Project team logged temperatures of nearly 51 °C on the ground outside a ceramic nest box and just 23 °C inside.

The discovery of a viable artificial nest could not have come soon enough since it appears that African penguins are even more sensitive to direct sun than previously thought. On Bird Island, Welman and Pichegru saw birds panting in an effort to cool down in temperatures as low as 22 °C. With climate change, birds nesting in exposed areas will increasingly be subjected to dangerous conditions.

Christina Hagen of BirdLife South Africa, who was not part of the study, says the results show that ceramic nests are a potentially useful conservation tool. “Finding effective conservation solutions is vital given the dire status of the African penguin population,” she says.

The main threat to African penguins is overfishing of anchovy and sardines, the seabirds’ favored prey. Scientists and conservationists are pushing the South African government to close commercial fishing around six African penguin breeding colonies until populations recover. But without refuge from rising temperatures and predators on land, those efforts alone may not be enough. Ceramic nests could help to give these beloved seabirds a fighting chance.

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine, and is republished here with permission.

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In the wild, the great bustard (Otis tarda) is pretty hard to miss. Some can weigh as much as 30 pounds and its feathers are uniquely colored. They are the heaviest birds living today that can fly and the Moroccan population is listed as classified as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species. They breed on grasslands from western Europe and northwest Africa to central and eastern Asia, with roughly 70 percent living on the Iberian peninsula.

These great big birds also might actively try to find two plants that can kill pathogens, making them a rare example of a bird using plants to fight disease.

[Related: Can birds smell? This ornithologist is debunking a long-standing myth.]

A new study published yesterday in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution details this self-medication in great bustards.

“Great bustards seek out two species of weeds that are also used by humans in traditional medicine,” co-author Azucena Gonzalez-Coloma, a researcher at the Institute of Agricultural Sciences in Madrid, said in a statement. “We show that both contain antiprotozoal and nematicidal (ie, worm-killing) compounds, while the second also contains antifungal agents.”

Self-medication is suspected to occur in a range of animals from fruit flies to macaws to elks, but tricky to prove beyond doubt in wild animals since comparing between control and experimental treatments with the plants is nearly impossible. “And double-blind trials or dose-effect studies, obligatory steps in human or veterinary medicine, are obviously impossible in wild animals,” cautioned Luis M. Bautista-Sopelana, a staff scientist at the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid and one of the study’s authors.

The female birds typically stay within the home range from where they were hatched, while revisiting the same lek site year after year. Lek breeding is when male birds gather at chosen sites to put on a bit of a show for females, who select their mate based on his appearance and the quality of his performance.

However, by staying and pooping in the same area for long periods of time, the female birds risk re-infecting themselves with illnesses. For males, the exceptional stamina that they need during mating season likely causes their immune systems to weaken.

“In theory, both sexes of great bustards might benefit from seeking out medicinal plants in the mating season when sexually transmitted diseases are common—while males that use plants with compounds active against diseases might appear more healthy, vigorous, and attractive to females,” said Gonzalez-Coloma.

[Related: These new interactive maps reveal the incredible global journeys of migrating birds.]

The team collected a total of 623 droppings from female and male great bustards, including 178 during the mating season in April 2022. Using a microscope, they counted the recognizable remains in the poop, such as tissue from stems, leaves, and flowers, of 90 plant species that are known to be on the bustards’ menu.

They found that two species are eaten by great bustards more often than expected: corn poppies (Papaver rhoeas) and purple viper’s bugloss (Echium plantagineum). Cattle in the area avoid eating corn poppies, but they are used in traditional medicine as a pain reliever, sedative, and even an immunity booster. It also has multiple fatty acids. Purple viper’s bugloss is toxic for humans and cattle if eaten in large amounts, but it is rich in edible oils that up its nutritional value.

“Great bustards select corn poppies and purple viper’s bugloss mainly in the mating season, in April, when their energy expenditure is greatest. And males, who during these months spend much of their time and energy budgets on sexual display, prefer them more than females,” said Bautista-Sopelana.

While the study proposes that great bustards are excellent candidates for birds that seek out specific plants to use as medicine, more research is needed to understand how this works.

“The ultimate proof of self-medication requires experimental protocols developed in the biomedical, veterinary, and pharmacological sciences,” said Bautista-Sopelana. “Until then, we continue with our fieldwork. For example, quantifying the prevalence of remains of corn poppies and purple viper’s bugloss and pathogens in fecal droppings across different populations of great bustards could falsify our hypothesis of self-medication in this species.”

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At most family gatherings, a Thanksgiving meal is not complete without the turkey. As the popular centerpiece is carved and served, chances are you’ll be asked: Would you like white or dark meat? And people have some strong preferences for specific slices of the giant bird. Dark meat devotees swear by the juicy tenderness of a plump thigh while white meat lovers will be quick to point out the healthiness in a lean turkey breast. From taste to nutrition, many have debated over which color meat is better.

Turns out, there is no right answer. “White or dark poultry meat, there’s not much of a difference [in terms of health],” says Dong Ahn, a poultry researcher and professor in the department of animal science at Iowa State University. “A lot of people in the US like white meat better than dark meat [in all poultry] because people are afraid of fat and try to avoid fats at all costs. But in other parts of the world, they prefer dark meat because it’s more flavorful.”

Fat vs. flavor

When people say white meat is better than dark meat, chances are they’re referring to saturated fat. “The saturated fat for the dark meat is a little bit higher than white meat,” explains Joan Salge Blake, a nutritionist and professor at Boston University. But, she adds that the difference in fat between white and dark meat can be really small. For example, a three-ounce serving (about the size of your palm) of white meat without the skin is about 125 calories and with less than two grams of fat, Blake says. In contrast, three ounces of dark meat without any skin has 147 calories and five grams of fat—just three more grams of fat from white meat.

[Related: Prep your organs to eat as much food as possible on Thanksgiving]

Dark meat may have increased fat content, but that’s often why people find it more flavorful, says Blake. As fatty acids are exposed to high oven temperatures, the heat oxidizes them into new volatile compounds that enhance meat flavor. Plus, while dark meat is a bit more caloric and fatty, it’s packed with helpful nutrients. The red meat also has a lot more vitamins and minerals—iron, vitamin B-12, vitamin A, and zinc—than lighter, leaner meat. 

Why does turkey have white and dark meat?

Regardless of color, all turkey meat is equally healthy. So why does white and dark meat look so different? That boils down to the muscle activity of the gobbler. Dark meat is typically found in the thighs and legs of the bird. Turkeys spend a lot of time on their gams, standing and walking around. This causes their muscle fibers in these areas to be typically larger and require a constant energy source, Ahn says. Energy is produced using muscle fat and oxygen taken from myoglobin, which are proteins found in muscle cells that capture oxygen from your blood and supply them to working muscles. Myoglobin naturally has a red pigment, and the more active the muscles are in the thighs and legs, the more myoglobin accumulates in the area.

[Related: 5 main dishes to serve up as alternatives to turkey at Thanksgiving]

White meat, on the other hand, comes from the wings and breasts of the turkey. Ahn says white meat has a lighter shade because the structure and muscle composition in these regions are different from dark meat. Turkeys do not normally fly unless startled or in danger—even then it’s only at a short distance and not very high from the ground. Because these muscles are not used often, there is less muscle fiber and, therefore, less demand to make constant energy from muscle fat. As a result, there is less of a  need for myoglobin to shuttle oxygen to these muscle groups. 

If you’re one of the few who hasn’t pledged loyalty to either color of meat, Blake says you can’t really go wrong with any part of the turkey. When cooked properly, the whole turkey is a rich protein powerhouse, she says. “It’s a bird that keeps on giving and giving.”

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This article was originally featured on The Conversation.

During the northern hemisphere summer of 2022, yet another round of extreme heat waves roasted Eurasia, North America and northern Africa – a stark reminder that these conditions are becoming the new normal.

These events can have a devastating impact on wildlife. For instance, reports of large-scale deaths of birds have become regular in recent years, as we’ve seen in Patagonia, Argentina and Spain.

These events underscore the need to understand the ability of birds (and other animals) to tolerate extreme heat. This information will be essential for predicting where and when future mortality events could occur. It can also tell us which species will be most affected.

Intriguingly, when we conducted a study to measure how much heat 53 bird species in southern Africa could stand, we found that species vary greatly in the way they handle heat.

Most significantly, how hot a bird’s body temperature could get – what we call “maximum tolerable body temperature” – differed in unexpected ways among bird species from different climatic regions. This suggests that birds from different climates will handle extreme heat differently.

This is an important finding. Previous research assumed that the body temperature response to extreme air temperatures for birds was similar between species. Predictions on how vulnerable birds are to climate change have been modelled with this thinking in mind.

Our study shows that the reality is more complex. Birds may have evolved depending on where they lived, to have variation in traits like body temperature and their ability to handle heat.

Assuming that birds all handle heat in the same way could result in predictions that don’t reflect how vulnerable they truly are to global warming. To improve the accuracy of such predictions, the body temperature limits of specific species need to be incorporated.

Body temperature regulation in the heat

Our study examined 53 bird species from hot arid, cool mountainous or warm humid coastal regions of southern Africa.

We hypothesised that birds from different climatic areas differed in body temperature responses to extreme air temperatures. We tested this hypothesis by measuring the birds’ body temperature, metabolic rate and evaporative water loss at increasing air temperatures. (Water loss primarily happens when a bird pants, allowing it to cool down.)

We were particularly interested in the birds’ maximum body temperature. We measured this just before birds displayed symptoms such as loss of co-ordination and uncontrolled increases in body temperature. Both of those symptoms are associated with the onset of severe hyperthermia, or overheating.

We found that desert birds comfortably handled air temperatures exceeding 50°C, without a dramatic increase in their body temperature. They maintained body temperatures below approximately 44.5°C.

In contrast, birds from warmer, humid regions tolerated air temperatures in the upper 40s before showing signs of severe hyperthermia. Their body temperatures increased on average by almost six degrees above normal levels of 38-41°C.

Generally, large fluctuations in a bird’s body temperature during extreme heat exposure suggests that the bird isn’t able to maintain (or thermoregulate) optimal body temperatures.

However one species, the red-billed quelea, which occurs across much of sub-Saharan Africa, could cope with a body temperature increase to an astounding 48°C without any ill effect. This was previously thought physiologically impossible among birds.

Evolution of heat tolerance

Why did birds evolve tolerance of such high body temperatures?

The answer, we think, is that birds from more humid areas have adapted to rely less on evaporative cooling during hot weather.

Evaporative cooling is when a bird loses heat by panting through its mouth or via other pathways. It is the only way a bird can offload heat when the temperature of its immediate surroundings is higher than its body temperature. So being able to tolerate a high body temperature allows a bird to survive in a humid area, where it can’t lose much heat by panting.

Essentially, birds which have evolved in humid climates survive extremely hot weather by tolerating hyperthermia. In contrast, desert birds use highly efficient evaporative cooling to avoid hyperthermia.

This suggests that being exposed to different climatic conditions has driven the evolution of differences in body temperature and heat tolerance among birds from different climates.

Protecting birds from heat

The findings of our study are highly relevant for understanding the risks posed by extreme heat waves to birds and other wildlife. For instance, our findings confirm previous suspicions that songbirds, which make up over half of all bird species on Earth, are particularly vulnerable to heatwaves.

Developing strategies to mitigate the effects of these events on birds and other wildlife is crucial, as extreme heat events are becoming more regular and widespread across southern Africa. They pose increasing risks to the region’s remarkable biodiversity.

These risks were dramatically illustrated in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, on 8 November 2020, when air temperatures in the Pongola area soared to 45°C by mid-afternoon. This caused huge numbers of birds to succumb. Approximately 90% of the bird carcasses found by field rangers in the nearby Phongolo Nature Reserve in the aftermath of the heat were those of songbirds.

Management interventions in protected areas may reduce the likelihood of future mortality events. Maintaining shady vegetation, for instance, provides cool places where birds can escape the worst of the heat. Free-standing water sources will also increase the likelihood that birds are able to defend body temperatures below lethal limits.

Ultimately, however, the only way to prevent large-scale losses of avian biodiversity – on account of rapid global warming – is the rapid decarbonisation of economies and a global transition to renewable energy sources.

Marc Trevor Freeman receives funding from National Research Foundation.

Andrew McKechnie receives funding from the National Research Foundation. He holds the South African Research Chair in Conservation Physiology, hosted by the South African National Biodiversity Institute and co-hosted by the University of Pretoria.

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Excerpted from Poetry in the Sky by Christian Spencer. Copyright © 2022. Available from teNeues Publishing.

The true majesty of a bird can only be seen entirely when it is captured in flight. In general, this pre­sents technical and artistic challenges to the pho­tographer. Whether it is the hummingbird flying at 50 kilometers an hour and 60 wing beats a second or a wedge-­tailed eagle (Aquila audax) gliding over the salt lakes of the interior of Australia—when captured properly, they pass a serene and poetic image like no other animal. 

Photographs of large flocks, for example of Australian parrots, can resemble impressionistic paintings full of depth and movement. Hummingbirds frozen in flight together with dew-­dropped flowers at times look like 3D sculptures. The scale-­throated hermit (Phaethornis eurynome), while sitting on a branch, can sometimes appear dull and inconspicious, but once captured hovering and feed­ing on delicate flowers, its full splendor can truly be seen. The blue ­and ­yellow macaw (Ara ararauna) of Brazil is one of the most beautiful birds in the world. Measuring more than a meter in length, it glides and flies through the usually dry and harsh landscapes in a dance of technicolored poetry.

Many birds give the impression they are swimming through an invisible liquid or performing a highly syn­chronized ballet that has been planned and written through the echoes of time.

Buy Poetry in the Sky by Christian Spencer here.

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Meet the Príncipe Scops-Owl (Otus bikegila), a newly named species of owl found on Príncipe Island—a 53 square-mile island located off the western coast of Africa. The owl was first confirmed by scientists in 2016; however, some locals in the area suggest that it could date back almost a century to 1928. It has yellow eyes and primarily brown plumage and lives in the island’s rainforests.

The name “Otus” is the generic title given to a group of small owls sharing a common history, also called scops-owls. This group of owls are found in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and include the African Scops-Owl (Otus senegalensis) and Eurasian Scops-Owl (Otus scops). The second part of the new owl’s name, “Bikegila,” is in homage to a Príncipe Island park ranger, Ceciliano do Bom Jesus, whose nickname is Bikegila.

[Related: Whose hoot? DNA and sound studies help define two new owl species in Brazil.]

“The discovery of the Príncipe Scops-Owl was only possible thanks to the local knowledge shared by Bikegila and by his unflinching efforts to solve this long-time mystery,” the authors say in a statement. “As such, the name is also meant as an acknowledgment to all locally-based field assistants who are crucial in advancing the knowledge on the biodiversity of the world.”

All of Príncipe Island, which is part of the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe, was extensively surveyed to determine the distribution and population size of the new species. According to additional research published yesterday in the journal Bird Conservation International, bikegila can be found only in the remaining old-growth native forest on the island. The area is in the southern, uninhabited part of Príncipe. The birds occupy a small space roughly four times the size of New York’s Central Park, with a population of about 1,000 to 1,500 owls.

The team has proposed that the International Union for Conservation of Nature add the bird to its red list and classify it as ‘Critically Endangered,’ the highest threat level, due to the bird’s concentration in such a small area. The team plans to continue species monitoring to learn more about the population’s size. The team notes that a bright spot for conservation is that bikegila’s habitat is fully included within the protected Príncipe Obô Natural Park.

An easy way to recognize bird species is through their calls, and bikegila is no exception in the wild. Its unique call was one of the main clues leading to its discovery. 

[Related: Meet the ancient owl that embraced daylight.]

“Otus bikegila’s unique call is a short ‘tuu’ note repeated at a fast rate of about one note per second, reminiscent of insect calls. It is often emitted in duets, almost as soon as the night has fallen,” Martim Melo, from the Research Centre in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources (CIBIO) and Natural History and Science Museum of the University of Porto and leader of the team, explains in a statement.

The paper credits a real team effort combining various skillsets and determination for the successful discovery.

“Birds are likely the best studied animal group. As such, the discovery of a new bird species in the 21st century underscores both the actuality of field-based explorations aiming at describing biodiversity, and how such curiosity-driven endeavor is more likely to succeed when coupled with local ecological knowledge, the participation of keen amateur naturalists, and persistence,” they add.

The team also believes the discovery is a cause for celebration, as the Earth is facing a significant loss in biodiversity.

“The discovery of a new bird species is always an occasion to celebrate and an opportunity to reach out to the general public on the subject of biodiversity,” Melo writes in the team’s paper. “In this age of human-driven extinction, a major global effort should be undertaken to document what may soon not be anymore.”

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Scientists have repeatedly proven that it is hard to say no to a tasty treat if it’s sitting right in front of you. Psychologists have used the Stanford marshmallow experiment since the early 1970s to study how delayed gratification and self-control work. In the experiment, scientists offer a child either a small but instant reward or a larger reward if they wait 15 minutes for their treat. The child is then rewarded with a marshmallow or pretzel stick, depending on their preference.

Additional studies using the marshmallow test found that the children who could wait longer for rewards tended to have better life outcomes and show higher intelligence. More recently, the predictive powers of the test have come under scrutiny, but the experiment has historically been a way to study how individuals react to temptation.

[Related: 7 creatures with skills that easily beat humans.]

Humans aren’t the only ones undergoing this sweet test. This ability for self-control has also been linked to cuttlefish and chimpanzees’ intelligence, and now, it’s the birds’ turn.

A study published today in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B has found that Eurasian jays (Garrulus glandarius) can pass an avian version of the marshmallow test. The birds that showed the most self-control also scored higher on intelligence tests. According to the study authors, this is the first evidence of a link between self-control and intelligence in birds.

Instead of using marshmallows, Scientists showed ten birds mealworms (the Eurasian jay version of chocolate), bread, and cheese, which the jays typically prefer in that order. The birds could choose between the immediately available bread or cheese or a mealworm. The extra tasty mealworm sat in their line of vision and behind a screen but could only get to after a delay and the screen opening.

The team tested delay times from five seconds up to five and a half minutes before scientists offered a tasty mealworm if the jay resisted eating the bread or cheese. While all the birds in the experiment could wait for the mealworm, some jays could wait longer than others. A bird named JayLo scored the highest by ignoring the cheese and bread for five and a half minutes before scoring a mealworm. Homer and Dolci could only wait 20 seconds max.

[Related: Artificial intelligence is helping scientists decode animal languages.]

“It’s just mind-boggling that some jays can wait so long for their favorite food. In multiple trials, I sat there watching JayLo ignore a piece of cheese for over five minutes – I was getting bored, but she was just patiently waiting for the worm,” said Alex Schnell from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Psychology and first author of the study, in a statement.

The study reports that the jays looked away from the cheese or the bread, possibly to distract themselves from the other food. Researchers previously used the technique in children and chimpanzees.

To measure their general intelligence, the team also used five cognitive tests. The jays that performed better in these tests could also wait longer for the mealworm, the way that JayLo could. According to Schnell, these results suggest that intelligence is linked with self-control in jays.

“The birds’ performance varied across individuals – some did really well in all the tasks and others were mediocre. What was most interesting was that if a bird was good at one of the tasks, it was good at all of them – which suggests that a general intelligence factor underlies their performance,” said Schnell.

Jays are members of the corvid family of birds nicknamed the “feathered apes” due to their impressive cognitive abilities. Birds in the corvid family are known to cache (or hide) their food to save it for later. The researchers believe this may have driven the evolution of self-control in these birds.

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This article was originally featured in Outdoor Life.

As hunters and bird watchers track the waterfowl migration each year, many of them look up to the clouds of southbound birds and ponder: How far can ducks migrate in a day? Earlier this month, a pintail hen gave us an answer.

She was sitting on a puddle in eastern Russia when she got the urge to fly back to her home continent. With the wind at her back, she took off at approximately 10:30 p.m. and was soaring over the Bering Sea by midnight. Reaching ground speeds of up to 150 miles per hour, the hen stayed airborne over southeast Alaska and the North Pacific. Twenty-five hours and roughly 2,000 miles later, the duck finally touched down in a wetland somewhere in northern California.

The bird had traveled approximately 10,000 miles over the last 10 months, and her journey wasn’t over yet. The hen’s final leg will carry her across the Pacific and Central Flyways all the way to the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, where she was originally tagged by researchers in January.

“It’s unbelievable,” says Paul Link, a lead waterfowl researcher with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. “It’s the first bird I’ve ever seen do this. We’re way over here in the Southeast, and most pintails don’t cross three flyways like that. Certainly, to my knowledge, none of them have ever crossed into a different continent.”  

But she’s not the only duck to make such an epic migration. Days after Link pieced together one pintail’s journey, he saw that another tagged pintail hen had taken a similar route, flying all the way to Russia and back. He says that bird is currently up around Great Falls, Montana, and he expects the two hens to head back to Louisiana any week now.

These two examples are cases of extreme long-distance and high-speed migration. According to Ducks Unlimited, most waterfowl fly at speeds of 40 to 60 mph, so with a 50 mph tail wind, ducks could travel approximately 800 miles during an eight-hour flight. Typically, a mallard would have to feed and rest for days after such a journey. However, new tracking technology is giving us an even better picture of how far ducks migrate—and why they might be going such long distances.

Using New Tech to Track Birds

Link has been studying waterfowl migrations for the last 14 years or so. Formerly the management coordinator for LDWF’s North American waterfowl management plan, he now works full-time as a researcher for the agency. He says this will be his fourth year in a row tracking pintails, but over the years he’s worked with nearly every waterfowl species from specklebellies to blue-winged teal.

Link says advancements in transmitter technology have ushered in a new era of waterfowl research. He’s typically used traditional, backpack-style transmitters that weigh about 15 grams, but he was able to get his hands on lighter, 10-gram transmitters in 2019. The devices feature small solar panels that keep them charged for long periods at a time, and a couple have even functioned over multiple migrations, he says. The small size of the transmitter also allowed Link to experiment with a new attachment method that is less cumbersome for the birds.

“It’s basically like a skin piercing that holds the transmitter on their backs,” Link tells Outdoor Life. “There’s no harness or traditional neck-and-body loops like most transmitters we’ve used in the past.”

Also, unlike old-school transmitters that use VHF technology and require researchers to actively search for signals, the new, lightweight transmitters rely on GPS-GSM technology and use cellular networks to transmit data in real time. This means that as long as the bird is close enough to a cell tower, Link can see its location on an hourly basis, along with other information such as the bird’s heading and flight speed.

Working with graduate students this January, Link was able to fit 30 pintail hens with these new transmitters using his new attachment method. He also fit another 27 pintail hens with the slightly heavier, backpack-style transmitters. All 57 birds were captured in Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge on the southwest coast of Louisiana.

Over the course of this spring, Link and his students kept track of these green dots as they headed north toward the Prairie Pothole Region, which is where most of the continent’s pintails nest every summer.

“It’s my daily ritual,” Link says. “The first thing I do in the morning and the last thing I do at night is look at the control panel and see where all the birds are.”

When he logged onto his computer in late April, one of the green dots had vanished. This wasn’t unusual, and he explains that in his experience, only 50 percent of tagged pintails tend to survive from year to year. (He also admits that fitting them with transmitters doesn’t exactly help their odds of survival.)

“This particular bird went offline in southeast North Dakota in late April, and from there we just assumed the worst,” Link says. “By the time we get to the first of October, you’re thinking that bird probably got killed on her nest and is in a badger hole or a fox den.”

He was wrong.

To Russia and Back

Link isn’t entirely sure of the date, but sometime between Oct. 2 and 4 he saw that one of the transmitters had come back online. It was sending a signal from somewhere in northern California. He figured the duck had been killed by a hunter.

“I’m like, oh boy, that can’t be good. It probably means that someone from California went to the Dakotas and shot her,” he says. “But I clicked on the dot and saw that it was one of the pintails. I clicked the link, expecting to see her bouncing from airport to airport … but nope, there goes her line. She went all the way up through the boreal to Alaska, then across to Russia and back across the Pacific to northern California. It all checked out, and since then she’s transmitted several times. She’s bouncing around the Sutter Buttes area, just doing what ducks do.”

Link was surprised, but he was even more shocked a few days later, when he saw that one of the hens fitted with an old-school transmitter had taken what he calls an “eerily similar route” to Russia.      

“In fact, at three different points throughout their migration between Rockefeller and Russia they were within a couple hundred meters of each other,” Link says. “It’s hard to wrap my head around it, but they were on the same wetland at the same time in northeast South Dakota, and in Russia they were within a couple hundred meters of each other, but five weeks apart.

“Every time I see stuff like this it makes me wish I could get on a plane and go look at it,” he continues. “You know it’s something special when birds put their feet on the same piece of ground—or on the same sandbar in the same river.”

While the flight paths of the two hens were similar, their stories are somewhat different. By looking closely at the transmitter data, which shows exactly how long each of the birds stayed in one place, Link ascertained that the first pintail hen tried to nest in South Dakota in early April. She lost her nest after eight days—Link assumes it was depredated—and then she took off for Russia. But the second hen never even tried to nest before moving on.

“When this bird passed through the eastern Dakotas this spring, it was a desert,” Link says. “The ground was brown, and the few semi-permanent wetlands were sheet ice. So, she literally went another 4,000 miles and never initiated a nest. Just said this isn’t the year, I’m not going to risk my own health and waste the energy.”

Forced Migrations

Aside from giving waterfowl researchers something to scratch their heads over, the epic journeys these two ducks undertook could also serve as proof that pintails are being forced to migrate further north because of climate change and habitat loss. Last month, Outdoor Life reported on the prolonged drop in pintail populations in this year’s waterfowl survey, and one scientist theorized that we could be looking for pintails in the wrong places during surveys.

“It could be they’re losing habitat, or it could be they’re actually gaining habitat in the north due to climate change,” explained Delta Waterfowl biologist Dr. Chris Nicolai. “And they’re just starting to move out of the areas we’re surveying, and we’re missing them.”

Link and other researchers have discussed the forced migration theory as well, and he says that in the case of the second pintail that flew to Russia, this is exactly what happened. After choosing not to nest in the PPR, the bird left the survey area prior to May 1 and was not included in this year’s duck count.

He also says it would make sense for the birds to fly farther north than they have historically because of the amount of habitat they’re losing on the prairie. And since pintails migrate earlier than other ducks, they can’t hang around and wait for conditions to improve in a drought year—which is what gadwalls, mallards, and a lot of other mid- to late-nesters do.

“Pintails have a lot going against them. When they show up on the landscape, it’s boom or bust. If the conditions aren’t perfect, a lot of them aren’t even going to attempt to nest,” Link explains. “They’re also attracted to the shortgrass prairie landscapes, and that’s the area that’s seen the largest conversion to row crops here in recent years. They estimate that 1.8 million acres of native prairie was converted to annual agriculture in the Prairie Pothole Region alone last year.”

Unlocking the Secrets of Birds

Looking at all 57 of the pintails that were tagged in Louisiana this January, it’s clear that we still have a lot to learn about these birds. The two far-flying hens that Link tracked were obviously the most intriguing of the bunch, but it’s possible that they’re not so much exceptions to the rule as they are examples of what ducks are capable of.

At least eight or nine of the tagged birds didn’t survive nesting season. Their transmitters were recovered by Link and other researchers in the Dakotas and Canada. Meanwhile, two other pintails that Link is still tracking might have made it all the way to Russia this summer, but instead they did something that he finds even more fascinating. They turned around.

Link explains that although conditions in the PPR were bleak in early April, things improved substantially at the end of the month when two good blizzards hit the region.

“We actually had a couple pintails that somehow knew that,” he says. “They were up along the edge of the parklands in the boreal forest in central Canada, and they actually turned around and went back to the eastern Dakotas and successfully nested.”

The way Link sees it, there’s only one explanation for why those ducks turned around. Why else would they go back to a place that they flew over weeks before and deemed unfit for nesting?

“There’s no reason other than birds communicating with each other. Ducks obviously share information, and they have a communication network that we underestimate,” Link says. “I’m sure there’s been a bird sitting in the parklands when another bird drops into their wetland and is over there chattering: ‘You wouldn’t believe how much water there is in the Dakotas, it’s over the roads!’ Stuff like that absolutely happens and nobody will ever convince me otherwise.”

Waterfowl researchers may never fully understand what makes ducks tick, or why one pintail would stay in the Dakotas while another flies to Russia. But that won’t keep Link and others from trying.       

“As we unlock all these little secrets,” he says, “they’re surprising us at every corner.”

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The world’s 10,000 plus bird species are as ecologically and structurally complex as they are beautiful. The roots of all this diversity run deep, and likely began during a period of mass extinction 66 million years ago, after an asteroid struck the Earth (the same space rock that wiped out the dinosaurs).

Most of the birds that you see today come from dramatic evolutionary changes that radiated throughout the planet after the extinction of dinosaurs, says Guillermo Navalón, a paleobotanist from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, in an interview with Popular Science. “And [birds] recovered really quickly, within the first 10 million years or so,” he adds.

[Related: These new interactive maps reveal the incredible global journeys of migrating birds.]

Following this mass extinction, it’s believed that distinct water and land birds evolved. According to Navalón, the understanding of this avian evolution has improved with new technology, studies are often limited to a focus on a few traits or parts of a bird’s body that are considered to be most important, like the beak or feet.

In a study published today in the journal Nature, Navalón, paleontologist Roger Benson, and their team analyzed the skeletons of more than 200 species of modern birds with 3D imaging technology and found substantial variation in their evolution. The striking differences made of evolution between water birds and land birds, for instance changes to the beak that make it easier for marine birds to catch fish, highlights the important role that the environment has on shaping features of animals.

“Birds are petite and they are relatively morphologically constant. They don’t experience crazy evolution like lizards. Most all birds have their wings and a pair of legs,” says Navalón. This consistency is important for studies like this one that used three dimensional (3D) morphology to work backwards through time to see what birds looked like.

The study analyzed 13 skeletal elements in 228 species, looking at their heads, wings, and legs. The authors find that the mass extinction played only a small role in explaining the diversity of living birds, and subsequent pulses of change and the ecology of the habitats the birds evolved in may have played a more important role.

[Related: The year’s best bird photos highlight the humor, beauty, and fragility of avian life.]

“One of the main things that really surprised us is to see such a clear pattern and a clear cut difference between animals like birds in marine environments, and birds living in terrestrial environments. We thought that ecology was not going to be as important, but apparently, it completely affected the patterns of the evolution of these animals,” says Navalón.

Since fossilized bird bones are rare, they used modern bird skeletons to work backwards through time.

“By using what we call phylogenetic comparative methods, we can interrogate the patterns just by looking at the old species, the relationships of lineages of modern species and when they split. We can tell how they split because we have genome studies that inform about the molecule evolution, and we know that this progresses in particular rates, and then we have fossils that we can calibrate the the splitting events,” says Navalón.

According to the authors, the 3D images are some of the most comprehensive to date. By building these images to travel back through time, the team’s findings reframes the discussion of how mass extinctions impact evolutionary paths. Also, it highlights the role ecology plays in bird evolution for winged creatures in the skies and the seas.

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This article was originally featured on Undark.

A nasal, laughing bird call echoed through the Ortiz Mountains in northern New Mexico this September. A couple of pinyon jays chattered loudly as they flew over the piñon pine and juniper woodlands that sweep across the foothills. “They have really fun calls,” said Peggy Darr, then the resource management specialist with Santa Fe County’s Open Space, Trails, and Parks Program. “They’re a very hard bird not to love.”

The jays forage for piñon nuts in the dense habitat on the ridgetop in fall and winter, then cache them in more open areas near the road, she said. Caching is critical for the jays’ survival, but also for the trees. Pinyon jays and piñon pines are wholly interdependent — the piñon nuts provide essential sustenance for the bird, and the jay offers critical seed dispersal for the tree. The pinyon jay is a keystone species of these arid forests of diverse piñon pines and junipers, extending over 150,000 square miles across 13 Western states.

The “blue crows,” as the jays were once known, are year-round residents of 11 Western states, but New Mexico hosts the largest share, about one-third of their population.

Together, jays and piñon pines help create vital habitat for numerous plants and animals, including threatened bird species like Woodhouse’s scrub jay and the gray vireo. The pines also supply a traditional food source for Indigenous tribes and Hispanic communities in New Mexico.

These dusky blue birds once roamed the West in huge flocks, with hundreds alighting on piñon pines to glean nuts in the winter months. Now it’s uncommon to see flocks of more than 100. In the last 50 years, the population of pinyon jays has declined by an estimated 80 percent.

The jay is listed as a “species of greatest conservation need” in New Mexico, and this year the conservation organization Defenders of Wildlife petitioned to list it under the Endangered Species Act, citing “woefully inadequate” protections at the federal and state level.

The two major culprits of the jays’ decline are climate change and a long history of piñon pine removal carried out by federal agencies, including, increasingly, thinning and burning for wildfire prevention. Both have impacted piñon pines and led to declining nut production. Darr, now with the Defenders of Wildlife, said conservation is critical for the jay, but also “for an entire ecosystem, and all the other species” that depend upon it.

In the midst of a historic megadrought in the Southwest and a record-setting wildfire season in New Mexico, land managers are racing to implement wildfire prevention measures. Congress this year directed billions in funds to federal agencies, who in turn are planning significantly increased treatments on millions of acres of federal lands.

In forests, these treatments often involve thinning: the removal of trees by machinery, by hand, or with herbicides. While historically piñon-juniper forests were systematically cleared using destructive techniques like chaining — dragging thick steel chains between tractors to rip out trees in their path — current practices by federal agencies involve more selective thinning.

But some bird biologists, like Darr, are sounding the alarm that even today’s thinning methods degrade pinyon jay habitat. These woodlands are already under extreme drought stress, especially in New Mexico, with predictions for widespread loss due to climate change. And some studies suggest thinned piñon-juniper forests are less resilient to beetle infestation and drought.

In 2004, the International Union for Conservation of Nature placed the pinyon jay on its Red List as “vulnerable” to extinction. It cited a current rate of decline of over 3 percent per year, and a historic loss of “possibly millions” of jays from the 1940s to the 1960s. During roughly the same period, an estimated 3 million acres of piñon-juniper woodland were destroyed to create pasture for livestock.

Bryan Bird, the Southwest program director at the Defenders of Wildlife, said piñon- juniper woodlands have long been maligned as having no economic value, and targeted for removal by private, state, and federal managers in favor of grasses for livestock. The current management imperative calls for thinning to reduce wildfire risk, he said, “which most people think is benign” for the bird. “But it’s not,” he added, noting that the specific habitat requirements of pinyon jays are just beginning to be understood.

Kristine Johnson is a retired faculty member of the biology department at the University of New Mexico who for 20 years has studied pinyon jays and their habitat. While there’s not yet research on the direct impacts of thinning or burning on pinyon jays, Johnson said studies show “extreme thinning” isn’t good for nesting habitat.

And according to Bird, the flood of new federal funds for wildfire prevention combined with what he called a loosening of environmental rules is “not going to be good for the pinyon jay.”

New Mexico is home to four evergreen juniper species and the Colorado piñon, a small tree with short bottlebrush needles that sprout from dense branches. Woody cones tightly grasp its thick, egg-shaped seeds, drawing the garrulous jays to pry them out.

Johnson said the jays have several adaptations that make them excellent seed dispersers for piñon. Their long bills work like a chisel to crack open the tough piñon shell. Their esophagus expands to store up to 50 nuts, and since they’re highly social, one flock can plant millions of seeds in a fall season, Johnson said. They’re strong fliers with a huge range of several thousand hectares. And while they have an excellent memory for recalling their nut caches, the seeds they don’t retrieve can become new piñon trees.

But this feat of co-evolution comes with vulnerabilities. On an irregular cycle, piñon pines produce a mast crop — a particularly abundant supply of nuts. Pinyon jays rely on these mast crops for their reproduction, storing large quantities of seeds in the fall and winter to feed to their young in the spring. In a drought year without a mast crop or other bountiful food sources like insects, pinyon jays may not nest at all, Johnson said.A pinyon jay holds a piñon pine cone in its long, curved beak. The birds pry open the cones for their oily seeds, which they cache across an impressive range, replanting the trees for future seasons.

In recent years, Johnson has observed smaller piñon mast crops, occurring with less frequency, and studies have linked drought and declining cone production. And according to Johnson, not all piñon juniper forests provide good habitat for jays. She recently created a model based on previous fieldwork to predict nesting habitat across New Mexico, and found jays tend to place their nests in larger trees in areas with dense canopy cover and low levels of recent disturbance. Her analysis found the highest quality habitat was “surprisingly scarce.”

A new survey may provide help for jay conservation. The New Mexico Avian Conservation Partners, a state chapter of the national bird conservation coalition Partners in Flight, is surveying for pinyon jays and other birds in thinned and unthinned piñon-juniper forests across New Mexico. Darr, a co-chair of NMACP, said they started the study out of a sense of urgency. “We didn’t have time to wait for a bunch of little studies to be done to get a consensus” on how treatments affect jays, she said. Additional bird species that rely on these forests include Grace’s warbler and the juniper titmouse, both listed as “species of greatest conservation need” by the state of New Mexico.

The second season of the three-year study wrapped up this year, Darr said, and results from the first year’s data show lower densities of some birds in the thinned areas.

The NMACP this year released recommendations for piñon-juniper management, co-authored by Darr, Johnson, and others. Darr said unlike scientists in other states, she and other biologists with the NMACP “feel the science is strong enough” to recommend land managers reconsider or reduce thinning in order to conserve pinyon jay habitat.The pinyon jay range, shown in yellow, extends over 150,000 square miles across 13 states. It overlaps forests of several different species of piñon pines, shown in purple, orange, and blue.

For her part, Johnson said some agency management plans “are applied in sort of a generic way,” without taking into account historic wildfire frequency, for example. She noted the scientists’ recommendation for treatments like thinning near human infrastructure, with “less focus on altering the wild areas.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declined to make a subject-area expert available for an interview. In a non-attributed written response emailed to Undark by FWS public affairs specialist Allison Stewart in September, the agency cited “little data on the effects of management on jay populations,” and said “we are exploring the effect of the removal of pines and junipers” to reduce wildfire risk in order “to determine if these contribute to short term causes of decline.”

Johnson said some agencies are receptive to recommendations for management to conserve pinyon jays. The Pinyon Jay Multi-state Working Group, for example, recommends that thinning take place outside the breeding season, and that managers avoid thinning in habitat with nesting colonies. “But they’re huge bureaucracies and changing people’s minds takes a long time,” Johnson said.

The recent Defenders of Wildlife petition also noted the impact of rules allowing the approval of projects in pinyon jay habitat without environmental assessments. “It just gives them a path to undertaking large habitat manipulations without considering the impact on this bird,” Bird said.

The petition contains the first estimate of total acreage of piñon-juniper habitat currently treated by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service in states with pinyon jay populations. The estimate “suggests extensive loss of suitable pinyon jay habitat on federal lands,” with over 440,000 acres impacted, according to the petition.

Bird said that’s why listing the pinyon jay as endangered is critical: “It would require them to take a really hard look at what the impacts are to the bird” and consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service before carrying out treatments in pinyon jay habitat. Johnson agreed, saying that listing the pinyon jay as endangered would have a “huge impact” because agencies would be required to alter their management plans.

Throughout history, Indigenous peoples across the West have foraged for piñon nuts and relied on them as a critical food supply during the winter and lean years. When the Spanish arrived in the Southwest in the 1500s, they also began gathering the oily, protein-rich seeds. The long tradition of families harvesting piñon nuts continues in many communities today. Yet threats to piñon forests endanger these cultural practices.

“I’ve been picking piñon since I could walk,” said Raymond Sisneros, a retired horticulture teacher who farms outside the town of Cuba and traces his family line to the first Spanish settlers.

If the pines near their home weren’t producing, his family would drive to another site. His grandfather taught him how to harvest the nuts, and he sold them door-to-door in the nearby town. Piñon wasn’t a treat, he said, but a “way of life,” a source of both food and revenue. Now it’s rare to find New Mexico piñon for sale.

The last time Sisneros had a big crop near his home was four years ago, and family members traveled from as far away as Tennessee and California to gather piñon. But those traditions may be coming to an end. “I’m scared, because our piñon forest is going,” he said. The large trees that once produced over a hundred pounds of piñon nuts are dying because of drought, he said.

Val Panteah, governor of Zuni Pueblo in northwestern New Mexico, said many tribal members gather piñon in the late fall. He remembers harvesting piñons with his family as a teenager, climbing into trees and shaking the branches so the nuts would fall onto a bedsheet on the ground.

Panteah has observed changes in piñon crops over the years. “When I was really young, it seemed like it was every year” or every other year for a big piñon crop, he said, “but now, it feels like every four years.”

The jays may offer the best hope for resilience for piñon-juniper forests. They’re “the only species that is capable of moving a woodland uphill if there’s been a fire,” Johnson says, “or replanting an area that’s been burned or decimated by insects or drought,” by ferrying seeds away from the degraded area.

Yet these species’ intimate interconnection also leads to what Johnson calls a vicious cycle. If the bird is lost, the woodlands can’t be replanted.

If the woodland isn’t replanted, the bird populations decline.

For the tree, for the bird, and for the people, she said, “it would just be tragic for us to lose these woodlands.”

Sara Van Note is a print and audio reporter based in New Mexico.

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This article was originally featured on Field and Stream.

Wetland conservation is paying off big time according to a new study. The 2022 U.S. State of the Birds Report is a joint research project that was undertaken by 33 science and conservation organizations and wildlife management agencies. It’s the first comprehensive look at the nation’s bird populations since 2019. Researchers looked at long-term population trends of different types of bird species since the 1970s.

Waterbird populations rose 18 percent since 1970 while dabbling and diving duck populations rose 34 percent—the largest increase of any type of bird. In fact, freshwater waterfowl was the lone bright spot in the study, with all other types of birds showing declines. Sea ducks dropped 33 percent. Forest birds in the east and west both declined. Grassland birds dropped 34 percent, and “tipping point,” or threatened, species plummeted by a whopping 67 percent.

“While a majority of bird species are declining, many waterbird populations remain healthy, thanks to decades of collaborative investments from hunters, landowners, state and federal agencies, and corporations,” said Dr. Karen Waldrop, chief conservation officer for Ducks Unlimited. “This is good news not only for birds, but for the thousands of other species that rely on wetlands, and the communities that benefit from groundwater recharge, carbon sequestration, and flood protection.”

“The North American Waterfowl Management Plan, Federal Duck Stamp Program, grants from the North American Wetlands Conservation Act, and regional Joint Ventures partnerships are all part of a framework that has a proven track record with restoring and protecting wetland-dependent species,” added Martha Williams, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). “Now we want to use that precedent to work with our partners to restore bird populations, conserve habitat, and build a foundation for how we respond to the loss of other bird groups.”  Ad

The report emphasizes the need to proactively protect habitats for other types of birds to prevent further declines—and to scale up conservation efforts across the board. The report used five sources of data to track populations, including the United States Geological Survey’s North American Breeding Bird Survey and the Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count, which relies on volunteer bird watchers and hunters to tally the birds they see from December 14 through January 5 each year.

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Over the next two months, hundreds of millions of birds will fly down the continental US on their way to winter nesting grounds. Some fall migrants will journey the length of Mexico, while others will cross the Gulf of Mexico to reach South America.

For the most part, birds take on their migration at night, nearly invisible far up in the air. But BirdCast, real-time software produced by ornithologists at Colorado State University and Cornell University, takes the nocturnal passage of those animals and turns it into maps that can guide you through the seasonal spectacle.

[Related: These new interactive maps reveal the incredible journeys of migrating birds]

Birdcast uses a combination of radar from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration  weather stations—which detects bats, birds, and mayfly hatches, in addition to clods—and federal weather forecasts to predict migration hotspots. “Songbirds in general move in really broad fronts,” says Kyle Horton, an ornithologist at Colorado State University and one of the programs developers. Radar can spot individual flocks as they flap away from a roost, but from a continent-wide perspective, “you will see birds lifting off the landscape basically everywhere except big bodies of water.”

By pairing data on which conditions have favored migrations in previous seasons, BirdCast shows the swathes of North America where wind, rain, and temperature have made it possible for millions of birds to head south together all at once.

How it tracks birds

BirdCast offers both a retrospective on past fall and spring migrations and rapidly updated tools that look into the future.

The live map gives you a night-by-night view of how many birds were in the air across the country and where they were headed, stretching back to the spring of 2018. (Brighter and warmer colors mean more birds.) It also lets you compare a specific date to nocturnal flights from earlier years, and points out when your region is experiencing peak migration.

To see what’s in store, BirdCast’s developers recommend that you start with their three-day forecast maps. These offer a nationwide view of predicted migration hotspots—where birds will take off a few hours after sunset—over the next 72 hours.

“Being able to say however many millions of birds went over your state last night is a pretty cool thing,” says Mikko Jimenez, a PhD student in Horton’s lab. This isn’t just useful for ornithologists or birders, but helps explain migrations to everyday people: Recently, the Fox 10 news station in Phoenix used BirdCast data to depict migrations alongside its weather forecast.

After that, you can zoom in on your state or county on the Migration Dashboard. This tool shows how many birds crossed a county the previous night, based on radar readings, and how many there were in the air at the night’s most crowded moment. And if you’re interested in knowing exactly which species might be traveling through, the dashboard is integrated with Cornell’s eBird database, which reveals common avian sightings from the same time in previous years.

How it helps save birds

Jimenez, whose research focuses on how BirdCast can help protect migrating flocks, says the data is being used by conservation groups to direct campaigns that aim to reduce light pollution that hurts birds. Night-flying birds are easily confused by artificial light, especially from glass buildings, which can kill thousands of songbirds in a single night.

“You can focus ‘lights out’ campaigns on those big nights of migration, which I think is a huge game changer,” Jimenez says. BirdCast has formed partnerships with local nonprofits across the country, like Lights Out Texas, which convinced dozens of buildings in Dallas, Houston, and Fort Worth to turn off lights on key nights.

And while skyscrapers and other big reflective buildings present the most significant dangers to migrating birds, recent research suggests that turning off even some small fixtures measurably decreases the number of dead animals. If BirdCast indicates a heavy migration night in your area, you can help by, say, turning off your outdoor lights. “Individual action really does matter at a local scale,” Jimenez says.

“Light pollution is a simple fix, and if we change tonight, we’d have an immediate impact,” Horton says.

How to see bird migration up close

BirdCast can help you experience the thrills of fall and spring migration, Jimenez says, whether you’re a birder or not.

Just because birds mostly migrate at night doesn’t mean they’re impossible to spot. “I could be on my roof in Brooklyn … and literally hear birds migrating overhead,” Jimenez says. Think of it like an avian meteor shower, except you’re listening for the soft, high-pitched chirps flocks make as they pass overhead.

[Related: How to start birding in any US city]

“You can also see the aftermath of that if you go out to your local park,” where the birds might stop over before taking off again the next evening, Jimenez says. “You can almost feel that it’s birdier.”

The maps can also show that migrating birds are probably relying on more habitats around you than expected. “I think migration is such a cool conservation topic, because a lot of conservation issues are far from home,” Jimenez explains. “This is one that’s literally flying over your house, over cities, over rural areas. Everyone weirdly plays a part.”

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The steady tapping of a woodpecker as it drills into a tree for food or a nest site and drums to attract a mate is an unmistakable sound. Between their distinctive sound and the brilliant red feathers on some species of woodpeckers, these birds found all over the world stand out among other flighty, feathered creatures.

But this unique sound could be controlled by a special area of the brain. A team of researchers led by Matthew Fuxjager at Brown University and Eric Schuppe at Wake Forest University have found regions in the woodpecker forebrain which have previously only been associated with both vocal learning in animals and language in humans. Their study, published today in the journal PLOS Biology, suggests that the activity in this region of a woodpecker’s brain is associated with tree drumming, instead of vocalization like in other animals.

“I was really interested in the origins of drumming and how the brain controls it, and was shocked that woodpeckers had specialized brain regions to control drumming behavior,” Fuxjager, an associate professor of ecology tells Popular Science.

[Related: These new interactive maps reveal the incredible global journeys of migrating birds.]

Fuxjager is interested in the the evolution of display behavior, and how the brain, muscle, and hormone systems in an animal evolve so that animals perform new displays or unusual things. “At a mechanistic level, very few people have explored how the physiological and neurobiological systems in those animals evolved to support that behavior. So the idea that you’d have these specializations in the brain to support that behavior is really wild,” he says.

Human language and birdsong share many characteristics. They both require complex muscle coordination, are learned at a young age, and are controlled by special regions of the brain. Songbirds and humans also both express a marker gene in these regions called parvalbumin (PV) which helps move calcium around in the cell. “It is a protein that is expressed in lots of different cells throughout the body. I’ve studied parvalbumin and muscle and it’s also an in brain tissue,” Fuxjager explains.

The team checked the PV for gene expression in ducks, flamingos, penguins, and woodpeckers . They found that woodpeckers do contain these special regions of the brain that make PV and that these areas are similar in both number and location compared to many of the forebrain nuclei that control both song production and learning in songbirds.

[Related: Bird songs got sexier during the COVID-19 shutdown.]

During open field tests with woodpeckers, the team discovered that the behavior that triggered brain activity in these regions was their signature rapid drumming, and not their vocalizations (or songs). Woodpeckers use the drumming to defend territories just like birdsong does, and it requires rapid and complex motor movements, and must be adaptable when birds compete with each other.

Finding this system for non-vocal communication that is neurologically and mechanically similar to the birdsong system can help researchers understand how the brain has changed to preform different functions. It also paves the way for a greater understanding of bird and animal communication and how it is learned, which gives scientists more knowledge of the inner world of animals and their evolution.

“There’s two things that I really want to do after this,” says Fuxjager. “I want to test whether woodpeckers learned any component of their drumming, and the fact that they have these brain regions would suggest that that’s possible. The second thing I want to look at is whether the evolution of these regions in any kind of component of their their morphology. So, what the cells look like, what the brain regions look like, and whether that tracks to any differences or changes in drumming across the woodpecker family.”

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This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

A black rope had rubbed the whale’s flesh raw and white, making it easier for marine mammal rescuers to see the months-old humpback entangled in fishing gear off Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Using a nine-meter pole tipped with a sharp hook, rescuers from the Center for Coastal Studies (CCS) cut away the tangled gear—one of several similar rescue operations the team conducts each year.

The vast majority of the team’s rescue attempts are a success. But to Bob Lynch, CCS’s rescue operations manager, their efforts are a band-aid fix. There are many whales they can’t get to, he says. Beyond that, while disentanglement can save a whale, it can’t save the species, says Lynch. “What we’re doing is not a solution to the problem whatsoever.” Preventing whales from getting entangled in the first place will have a larger impact on their protection.

Vessel strikes and entanglement in fishing gear are the leading causes of human-caused mortality for humpbacks and other baleen whales. Over the past several years, scientists and conservation managers around the world have tried all sorts of things to prevent entanglements, including testing ropeless gear, increasing marine litter cleanup efforts, and implementing seasonal closures of areas that whales frequent. But off the Massachusetts coast, research led by Tammy Silva, a marine ecologist at the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary (SBNMS), hints at another way to find whales and hopefully prevent their entanglement. Key to the approach is the overlap of habitat use between humpback whales and one kind of seabird—the brown-washed great shearwater.

North of Cape Cod Bay, in the choppy waters off the SBNMS, great shearwaters often gather in the hundreds. Through tracking studies, Silva and her colleagues have shown that a congregation of great shearwaters can signal that a pod of humpback whales is swimming below. Both species are preparing for an offshore feast—the whales ascend from the deep to capture sand lance, a silver eel-like fish. Shearwaters lie in wait to pick from what the whales miss.

While it’s possible to track whales directly using satellite tags, the approach can be expensive, and the tags have a short life span. Catching and tagging seabirds, says Dave Wiley, SBNMS’s research coordinator, is also much easier than tagging a humpback whale.

Tracking shearwaters starts with getting birds in hand, Silva explains. Because great shearwaters spend the bulk of their lives on the open ocean, traveling to land only to breed, researchers have to capture them at sea. So, each year since 2012, the team has choreographed what Silva describes as an alien abduction.

Launching in a small inflatable boat from their mother ship, a 15-meter vessel in the Gulf of Maine, three or four team members set out after a raft of shearwaters. One team member tosses chopped mackerel and squid to lure birds in, while the others use long handheld nets to scoop the birds into the boat. Working quickly to minimize stress on the animals, they place each bird in a cat carrier to relax.

After they’ve caught several birds, they head back to the mother ship. There, the scientists collect samples to gauge each bird’s health and diet, and stitch a small solar-powered satellite tag to the skin between its wings.

Tagging and tracking 58 birds over five years has revealed the significant overlap between where and when great shearwaters and humpback whales meet en masse. Now, Silva and her colleagues hope to use this data to save humpbacks from life-threatening entanglements.

Identifying overlaps in known persistent hotspots, like SBNMS, means that now they can look farther offshore. “Take Georges Bank,” says Wiley, “no one’s going to Georges Bank to look for humpback whales.” But if enough shearwaters show up in the area between Cape Cod and Nova Scotia during a particular time frame, there’s a good chance that humpbacks are in the area, too.

There’s still a lot of work left in developing their real-time bird-based system for predicting the presence of humpback whales. But the team hopes that, in the future, detecting an aggregation of tagged birds could trigger action from marine management teams. Fishermen could be required to move gear, and boaters could be asked to steer clear of the area.

It’s a lot like how a phone or smartwatch can track its owner’s location through a constant update of information. “It’s really an extension of our everyday lives,” says Silva, “taking in real-time data and applying that to conservation.”

Maintaining the long-term data collection from shearwaters is central to both Wiley and Silva’s hopes for the future of the project—as highly mobile species, seabirds are a top indicator of ocean patterns and can help answer key questions about the health of marine life, including whales. To protect humpbacks, we have to change our approach, Silva says. “Ultimately, coexistence is what we’re after.”

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine, and is republished here with permission.

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The blackburnian warbler is a tiny songbird that weighs about the same as four pennies. Some of them are yellow, streaked with black and white. Others brandish a splash of tangerine across their face and throat. These birds typically spend their summers in the northeast US and some parts of Canada. In the winter, they fly down to South America, where they spend time in coffee plantations across Colombia, eating insect pests like spiders, aphids, ants, flies, beetles, and mosquitos alongside other migrating birds like tanagers and orioles. 

“Migratory birds are really important,” says Jill Deppe, senior director of the migratory bird initiative at the National Audubon Society. “In a single year, a single bird can eat enough insect pests to save a farmer 25 pounds of coffee per acre.” 

Many birds make incredible trips every year. The Arctic tern completes globe-trotting flights from one pole to another, clocking in 49,700 miles in a year; and the bar-tailed godwit holds the record for the longest non-stop flight at 7,000 miles.

It’s hard for most people to imagine what happens to birds after they leave backyards and city parks—where they go and what they get up to. But migratory birds serve as critical links between ecosystems half a world away. And losing them would have a devastating ripple effect. 

That’s why Deppe, Audubon, and other researchers, institutions, and technology vendors, built an interactive map, called the Bird Migration Explorer, helping non-scientist bird enthusiasts see a snapshot of the journeys these birds undertake, and understand their impact. It came online this week and is available in English and Spanish. Visit it here.

“What we have done with the Bird Migration Explorer is that we have brought all of the science together to show people how they are connected by migratory birds across the hemisphere, and show them the local actions they can take where they live have a hemispheric impact,” says Deppe. It also points out the importance of international collaboration in conservation efforts.

Synthesizing all the information they collected into an accessible, user-friendly tool was no easy task. Here’s how they did it. 

“We have lots of different types of data. Some are very precise, some are very coarse,” Deppe says. That data spans general range maps that appear in birding field guides, to genetics information, to connectivity, to seasonal abundance that birders have recorded in Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s ebird database to data from over 500 migration studies and more than 280 institutions. 

[Related: Project Icarus is creating a living map of Earth’s animals]

“We have been working on this for four years, thinking through how to get different types of data into a single map that tells a story that makes the science understandable,” Deppe says. “We couldn’t do everything in one map. So you’ll see on the explorer we have a series of maps.”

One map is focused on the movement of the birds. It integrates tracking data and overlays it on the abundance data, which shows how frequently a species of bird is spotted in an area. 

The second map is a map of the connections. It uses some tracking data and data on the locations of banded birds. “If you put a band on a bird and someone finds it somewhere else, you have a connection between those two points,” Deppe explains. This connection map also considers the genetic composition of the bird species. “It’s almost like ancestry.com, but for birds,” she says. “If you catch a bird you can look at its genetics and trace it back to a different location and atmosphere.” 

The third map shows where and when birds face the most conservation challenges—from climate change to light pollution to industry and agriculture practices.

To start, there are 458 species documented in the explorer. For 184 of them, the team gathered tracking data for the pathways of 9,000 individuals. 

Consider the bobolink, a common grassland species. The map shows the location of the bird at various times in the year. Select species are tracked with multiple technologies. For the bobolink, a few individual birds were tracked with a light-level geolocator device, but some were tracked through tags and an array of automated radio telemetry towers. The combination of the two allows researchers to see what specific areas are critical for the birds, and how they get there. 

[Related: With new tags, researchers can track sharks into the inky depths of the ocean’s Twilight Zone]

“We’re starting to use this new technology to reveal the bigger picture. And we can look at these birds across the year. This tells us where the important places are for migratory birds,” Deppe says. “Each type of data is a unique piece of the puzzle.” 

This kind of all-in-one-place information can also be used to influence local policy decisions and bring awareness to personal actions, argues Deppe. If you know that many migratory birds are passing through a large metropolitan area that you live in, like New York City, you might be more motivated to put out a potter of native plants on your balcony or argue for the preservation of a local green space park or ask managers of tall buildings to turn off lights at night during peak migration season.  

And because conservation decisions should be made based on the best available science, the team is focused on keeping the data on the site as up-to-date as possible. “People are publishing studies, tagging birds every day. There’s new information coming out,” Deppe notes. To this end, they’ll continuously reach out to data sources, and they aim to update the explorer every couple of months, so the visualizations pull in new information. Some information, like the ebird observations on abundance, will likely be updated on an annual basis, whereas tracking data might be updated more frequently. For scientists interested in working with specific data presented on the site, there’s a data provider panel on the lower right corner that shows the citations for every map.

Above all, ecologically, migratory birds are good indicators of the state of the environment. They’re like the canaries in a coal mine for climate change. “We have lost a lot of birds,” says Deppe. But we can reverse the damage. “We’ve seen some groups like waterfowls that weren’t doing well and we helped turn it around—it’s the one species that has been increasing in the last few years.”

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Ritual enema ceremonies depicted in pottery. The synchronizing heart rates of new lovers. Scorpion constipation. Why the words in your iPhone “Terms of Agreement” are so complicated. Moose crashes.

Research into all of these burning topics and more was honored yesterday at the 2022 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony. Now in its 32nd year, the good-natured parody of the Nobel prize recognizes the most unique, silly, and downright bizarre research that “first make people laugh and then make them think.” The Annals of Improbable Research gives out the awards less than one month before the real Nobel prizes are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden.

The ceremony is usually held at Harvard University, but has been online since 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Per tradition, actual Nobel laureates handed out the prizes. The winners received a virtually worthless Zimbabwean $10 trillion bill.

And the winners are…

Art History: ancient Mayan enemas

Peter de Smet and Nicholas Hellmuth wrote “A Multidisciplinary Approach to Ritual Enema Scenes on Ancient Maya Pottery” in a 1986 paper, but withstands the test of time. The paper was adapted from de Smet’s doctoral dissertation and focuses on polychrome pottery of the late classic Mayan period (600–900 CE). Palace scenes, ball games, hunting parties, and dances associated with human sacrifice (via decapitation) are usually painted on this kind of pottery, but 55 years ago, scholars discovered one Maya jar showing the administration of an enema. Other discoveries of fine fecal art followed.

Applied Cardiology: syncing hearts with your crush

Eliska Prochazkova, Elio Sjak-Shie, Friederike Behrens, Daniel Lindh, and Mariska Kret discovered evidence that shows when two new romantic partners meet for the first time and feel attraction, their heart rates synchronize, publishing their findings in November, 2021. Prochazkova said she did not have problem finding matches on dating apps, but often didn’t feel that spark when they met in real life. She set people up on blind dates in real social settings and measured their physiological reactions, and found that the heart rates of the pairs with real chemistry synchronized. So, did the team discover “love at first sight”? “It really depends, on how you define love,” Prochazkova, a researcher at Leiden University in the Netherlands, said in an email to the Associated Press. “What we found in our research was that people were able to decide whether they want to date their partner very quickly. Within the first two seconds of the date, the participants made a very complex idea about the human sitting in front of them.”

Literature: Terms of Agreement are too tricky

Eric Martínez, Francis Mollica, and Edward Gibson, did what has long needed to be done by analyzing what makes legal documents unnecessarily difficult to understand. Taking a closer look at any Terms of Agreement on a new software or device is enough to make you want to eschew all new technology forever. Martínez, Mollica, and Gibson were frustrated by all of this legal jargon. Their analysis focused on some key psycholinguistic characteristics: nonstandard capitalization (those written out in boistrous ALL CAPS), the frequency of SAT words (aforesaid, herein, to wit, etc.) that rarely appear in everyday speech, word choice, the use of passive versus active voice, center-embedding, where lawyers embed legal jargon within convoluted syntax. “Ultimately, there’s kind of a hope that lawyers will think a little more with the reader in mind,” Martínez told the AP. “Clarity doesn’t just benefit the layperson, it also benefits lawyers.”

Biology: scorpion constipation

Solimary García-Hernández and Glauco Machado did the grueling work of investigating constipation affects the mating prospects of scorpions. Scorpions are better known for their deadly venom and creepy crawly pincers, not so much for their poop habits. In a process called autonomy, scorpions can detach a body part to escape a predator. However, they also lose the last portion of the digestive tract when they do this. This can lead to a constipation and eventually death and the long term decrease in the, “locomotor performance of autotomized males may impair mate searching,” they wrote.

[Related: Cockatoos are pillaging trashcans in Australia, and humans can’t seem to stop them.]

Medicine: ice cream as cancer therapy

A team of scientists at the University of Warsaw in Poland showed in their 2021 study that when patients undergo some forms of toxic chemotherapy, they suffer fewer harmful side effects when ice cream replaces one traditional component of the procedure. This sweet study looked at cryotherapy, where cancer patients often suck on ice-chips to prevent oral mucositis (which causes sores in the mouth, gums, and tongue, increased mucus and saliva, and difficulty swallowing). But this can become uncomfortable really quickly. This now prize winning study found that only 28.85 percent of patients who used ice cream cryotherapy developed oral mucositis, compared with 59 percent who did not receive the Ben and Jerry’s approved cryotherapy.

Engineering: knob turning technique

Gen Matsuzaki, Kazuo Ohuchi, Masaru Uehara, Yoshiyuki Ueno, and Goro Imura, discovered the most efficient way for people to use their fingers when turning a knob. The 1999 study stressed the importance of a good universal knob design, particularly for, “instruments with rotary control,” particularly in elderly people who might find rotary knobs and faucet handles easier to use than a lever. Subjects in the study were asked to turn a series of different sized knobs clockwise with their right hand. They found that the the forefingers and thumb were used most frequently and extra fingers were used as the knobs became wider.

Physics: keeping your ducks in a row

Frank Fish, Zhi-Ming Yuan, Minglu Chen, Laibing Jia, Chunyan Ji, and Atilla Incecik, dove into the world of understanding how ducklings manage to swim in formation. Getting your ducks in a row appears to be all about energy conservation. They found that the ducklings instinctively tended to “ride the waves,” generated by the mother duck to significantly reduce drag. They then use technique called drafting, like cyclists and runners do in a race to reduce drag. “It all has to do with the flow that occurs behind that leading organism and the way that moving in formation can actually be an energetic benefit,” Fish told the AP.

Related: 8 animals being naturally hilarious.]

Peace: the gossip conundrum

An international group of scientists ranging from Bejing to Ontario developed an algorithm to help gossipers decide when to tell the truth and when to lie. Essentially, their work can help determine when people are more likely to be honest or dishonest in their gossip, drawing on models of behavior signaling theory. “Signals are adaptions shaped by marginal costs and marginal benefits of different behaviors, and the ultimate function of the signaler’s behavior is to maximize their fitness,” wrote the authors. The gossiper may be willing to pay some personal cost (being labelled a gossip or losing trust) to provide a benefit to the receiver. That’s because the gossip could gain a secondary benefit as a result of the receiver gaining juicy new information.

Economics: it pays to be lucky

Alessandro Pluchino, Alessio Emanuele Biondo, and Andrea Rapisarda, used math to explain why success most often goes not to the most talented people but instead to the luckiest. The 2018 paper noted that the qualities most often associated as leading to success follow a normal Gaussian distribution around a mean. For example, the average IQ is 100, but nobody boasts an IQ of 1,000 or 10,000. “The same holds for efforts, as measured by hours worked,” the authors wrote. “Someone works more hours than the average and someone less, but nobody works a billion times more hours than anybody else.” However, the distribution of wealth follows a power law, where there are significantly more poor people than the few hugely wealthy billionaires. The study suggests simple, random luck is the missing ingredient based on the agent-based model the authors developed.

Safety Engineering: moose tracks

Magnus Gens developed a moose crash test dummy, and shockingly it is actually useful information. Sweden’s highways are the scene of frequent collisions between the large mammals and cars, which can result in injury or death to both the moose and human. This crash test dummy will allow car makers to use animal crashes in their safety testing. Gens tested the dummy at the Saab facility using one modern Saab and one old Volvo traveling at about 45 mph and a second Saab at 57 mph. Fortunately for car makers, the dummy is robust and able to be reused in multiple crash tests before it needs to be replaced.

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If Alfred Hitchcock were making horror movies today, he might want to consider a re-make of his 1963 film The Birds, set in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia. Sulfur-crested cockatoos (Cacatua galerita), an intelligent bird native to Australia are still in a continuing years long battle with humans over trash.

The birds have had plenty of time to practice breaking into neighborhood trash bins. They do so by by prying up the front, lifting the lid, walking around to the side of the can, and then flipping the lid back. This innovative garbage invasion technique is passed between birds and a new study published yesterday in Current Biology, outlines the shifting techniques of this “interspecies innovation arms race.” The study says the cockatoos have escalated this fight further by thwarting human made defenses like rocks and water bottles.

“When I first saw a video of the cockatoos opening the bins I thought it was such an interesting and unique behavior and I knew we needed to look into it,” said lead author Barbara Klump, a behavioral ecologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, in a press release.

The main motivation for these clever cockatoos is food waste—like humans, the cockatoos are big fans of carbs. “They really like bread,” said Klump.

[Related: Australian cockatoos are teaching each other to open trash cans.]

The study found that prying open a trash bin is a cockatoo community affair. A cockatoo learns how to bust into a bin by observing their friends cracking it open, and some cliques even have group specific methods. “The cockatoos learn the behavior from observing other cockatoos and within each group they sort of have their own special technique, so across a wide geographic range the techniques are more dissimilar,” Klump added.

The trash bin lids can’t be completely closed all of the time because they need to be able to open when tipped by the arm of a garbage truck. In a survey conducted by the researchers, the team found that residents tried numerous tactics to keep the birds out: placing heavy objects like bricks and stones on their bin lids, strapping bottles of water to the top, rigging ropes to prevent the lid from flipping, or using sticks to block the bin’s hinges. These tactics were switched out once the cockatoos outsmarted them. There is even an emerging market for cockatoo locks for garbage bins.

Ana Culic, the manager of the Loaf Cafe in Stanwell Park told Science Alert, “if we don’t close the bin right after throwing out the rubbish they’ll be in there. Cockatoos everywhere. Like, just rubbish all over the front area.” She also shared that her family resorted to placing a lock on their bin.

The café’s chef Matt Hoddo added, “They’re evolving. Yeah, like if you go back like five-ten years ago, they didn’t know how to open bins so they’re figuring stuff out.”

The study shows that this “arms race” is an example of social learning for both cockatoos and humans. “People come up with new protection methods on their own, but a lot of people actually learn it from their neighbors or people on their street, so they get their inspiration from someone else,” Klump said. In the survey, 64 percent of the human trash-can owners learned about new protection methods from other people, with 61 percent of the residents changing their lid securing strategies when the birds won out.

[Related: How to keep raccoons and possums away from your house.]

While the team won’t place any concrete bets on who the winner of this game of trash can chicken will be, they plan to look at how the cockatoos’ behavior varies from season to season as a next step. They also expect to see more of this kind of human-wildlife behavior in the future. Raccoons are one of the better known examples of this kind of constant trash talking and garbage battling in cities like Toronto and New York. States like Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah face this issue with a much bigger animal: bears.

“As cities expand, we will have more interactions with wildlife,” said Klump. “I’m hoping that there will be a better understanding and more tolerance for the animals that we share our lives with.”

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A new report from The Rainforest Trust and Asociación Armonía (Rainforest Trust’s partner in Bolivia) shows that conservation efforts to protect the habitat of one of the world’s most beloved and endangered birds may be working. Once thought to be extinct, a population of nearly 50 blue-throated macaws was rediscovered in northeastern Bolivia in 1992, and thanks to conservation efforts, there are an estimated 200-300 of them living in the wild today.

As this year’s nesting season for the blue-throated Macaw nesting season comes to an end, the Laney Rickman Reserve reports 16 nesting attempts in the 100 nest boxes monitored by the park’s rangers. The nesting resulting in eight chicks successfully fledging—a significant number nt for conservation of the species, according to the Rainforest Trust. The Laney Rickman Reserve was created in 2018 in the southeast portion of the Beni Savanna as an effort to protect the largest known group of nesting critically endangered Blue-throated Macaws in the world.

As of last year, Asociación Armonía has successfully fledged 105 Blue-throated Macaw chicks since the inception of its nesting box program in 2005.

[Related: Monarch butterflies show hints of a comeback out West, but experts are cautious.]

“Rainforest Trust and our donors care about all endangered birds–indeed all endangered species. But Blue Throated Macaws are special–spectacular, brilliant, social. Our world would be vastly impoverished without them,” Rainforest Trust CEO James Deutsch said in a press release. “That’s why we are so privileged to support Asociación Armonía in their highly professional and successful efforts to pull this species back from the brink.”

The gold and blue parrot is one of the rarest birds in the world (it’s found only in Bolivia’s Beni Davanna) and highly intelligent. Despite these recent successes, they are still critically endangered due to habitat loss and the illegal pet trade.

[Related: “We don’t have a full picture of the planet’s shrinking biodiversity. Here’s why.”]

The reserve is located in the Beni Savanna, in the lowlands of the southwestern Amazon River basin in northern Bolivia. The area is also called the Llanos de Moxos and is one of only two unique Bolivian endemic ecosystems. It’s made up of natural savannas, forest islands with motacú and totai palm trees, dry forest patches, and river edge Amazonian forests. It is home to 146 mammal species, including giant anteater, jaguar, and maned wolf, and hundreds of species of birds.

A 2017 study published in Scientific Reports finds that three macaw species (including the blue-throated macaw) are influential seed dispersers in the ecosystem, primarily for the Motacú palm. The tree is also their preferred nesting tree and preferred food and need seed dispersal in order to thrive. 2017 also saw a record number of macaw sightings (155 individual sightings) at the Barbara Azul Nature Reserve in Bolivia, according to Asociación Armonía.

Despite the success, there are still major hurdles in protecting the world’s critically endangered species. A study published earlier this month in the journal Current Biology, finds that predicted loss of birds species with striking and extreme traits will likely face extinction first, taking with them unique traits in evolutionary history. Some estimate that there has been a 68 percent decline in species population and size over the past 52 years, with climate change threatening even greater biodiversity loss.

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This article was originally featured on PopPhoto.

Bird photography is a fun but expensive hobby, as many enthusiasts will attest. A full-frame camera can easily run into the thousands and the telephoto lens? Well, depending on the range and maximum aperture you desire, it can be the cost of a small car. The Nikon Z 800mm f/6.3, for instance, retails for $6,500, while Sony’s 400mm f/2.8 clocks in at $12,000. Luckily, most of us have quite a capable camera in our back pocket that, along with a couple of accessories, can make wildlife photography more accessible.

PopPhoto spoke with Tyler Greenly about his tips for iPhone bird photography using a spotting scope (also known as a “digiscope”). Greenly has a degree in biology and specializes in ecology and evolutionary biology. After spending time working in research studying endangered birds, he now works in environmental education as a guide at Jackson Hole Eco Tours in Wyoming, where he educates the public about wildlife. In addition to birding, he picked up photography a few years ago and alternates between a camera and his smartphone and spotting scope setup. 

What are some things people should expect when photographing birds? Any beginner’s tips?

Be prepared for the birds to move quite a bit and be kind and patient with yourself. Birds are one of the hardest animals to photograph because they’re often small and they move around, they jump from branch to branch, they’re often flying in the sky, and they’re often far away. It can be really difficult to get those shots when starting out. I would say if you’re a beginner at digiscoping, practice on something that is standing still. If you’re in an area that has domestic animals, you can practice on horses, or practice on your dog. If you like wildflowers, go and practice aiming at wildflowers and work your way up to birds.

Have patience, let yourself learn, and go with the process. Also, discover your own style. A lot of people don’t think of photography as an art form, but it can totally be an art form, and people have different styles. Let yourself go, discover, and have an idea of what you want to capture. But if you don’t capture exactly what you’re looking for, that’s okay, too.

I feel like when I first started photography, I wanted my photos to look like everyone else’s photos. That held me back; I didn’t see the value in what I was capturing. Allowing yourself to learn and to discover the process on your own is really important. The biggest thing about this is just to enjoy filming and capturing birds, and also viewing them out wherever you are. In a park, or in the wilderness, just have fun and enjoy it. 

What settings do you recommend to maximize image quality on a smartphone?

I definitely shoot all of my videos and photos on the highest setting on the phone. (Editor’s note: You can adjust video quality in your phone’s camera settings—4k capture is often an option.) I was surprised at how clear the photos come out through the scope. Some of them are actually pretty incredible. I don’t think that you could blow them up and sell them, [but] they’re definitely good enough for social media, sharing with friends, and capturing memories for yourself. If you’re wanting to capture photos professionally, then I would recommend definitely getting a camera setup.

I don’t use the flash at all. What I do is I focus the phone, so if you press your phone’s touchscreen and hold it down, then a yellow square appears (the color of the box may vary depending on your phone model). That’s the phone locking its focus, and that will make it a lot easier to focus on an actual bird using your phone. From that point on, you can just use the scope to focus. That will help clear up a lot of the graininess. A lot of phones [have reliable] autofocus, which is great in most cases, but when there’s a bird moving through branches, it’ll autofocus on leaves and sticks and stuff like that, and you want to focus on the bird. So, using that locked focus is probably the best technique.

I take a lot of slow-mo footage. That will give you some really cool slow-motion shots of birds flying through the sky. I would recommend messing around with the settings because these phones are pretty incredible and you can do a lot with them. You can even download specific apps to get filters if you’re trying to go for a stylized shot. You can take a filtered black and white shot, for example, through the phone scope.

Some folks might have binoculars but no spotting scope. Are they interchangeable?

When I first started out I would use my phone, balance it up against my binoculars, and take a photo through them that way. [It] takes a little bit of skill and a little bit of practice, but you can do it. There are certain setups that are more affordable than others. 

The setup that I’m currently using is a Maven scope with my phone scope case, and that is more of an expensive setup. That’s why the binoculars take so much skill, because you’re trying to balance [the phone’s lens] through the binoculars while also holding it still with your other hand. Having binoculars is great for spotting the animal, but as far as capturing a photo or a video of an animal, you’ve got to have a phone scope.

So, what’s the essential equipment you’d recommend for iPhone bird photography?

A tripod is absolutely essential. That is very important; it stabilizes the shot. If the animal is moving and you’re videoing, that allows for fluid movement. [If] you actually attach your phone to a scope, if it’s not attached to a surface it’s very shaky, so it’s really hard to capture a clear image. The more you zoom in, the shakier it’s going to be if you don’t have a tripod.

[Have a] case for your scope; oftentimes scopes will come with a case. Inevitably, when you’re out in the forest your scope’s going to hit branches. It might fall, so then you want a case to protect the scope, to protect the lens from getting scratched, [and] the mirrors inside from breaking. Bring a water bottle, bring binoculars. Binoculars can help you spot animals from a distance, and then you can set up the scope. 

Scopes are great for looking at animals from a distance, but they’re not always super-functional as far as finding animals. Binoculars are better at finding the animal, and then the scope’s better at capturing imagery of that animal.

What’s the best place to find birds to photograph? Are there certain times of day that are better than others for iPhone bird photography? 

Golden hour is the best time, obviously because the lighting is going to be the most beautiful. One thing that is great with birds is their activity level is highest during golden hour, oftentimes during those mornings. Birds are, we have a fancy word in science, called corpuscular. It means that animals are active in the mornings and evenings, versus nocturnal, [which means] active at night. Birds are going to be active early in the morning; they’re going to be singing. If you’re trying to get a shot of a really pretty bird, they’ll be singing at the top of a bush or a tree and won’t be moving around as much.

Those early morning hours can be a really good time to go look for birds, especially for the dawn chorus. You can get those birds singing before they move off and become harder to find. [At] first light, most species are pretty active.

They have increased activity when the sun begins to go down, but they’re not displaying as much. I think the mornings are better because they’re just more visible, a little more active.

[To find birds], I’d go to community parks. A lot of places now have what’s called a natural area, which is like a community-preserved area of a park for wildlife and for recreation. You can always go online and look up your local state parks. [In the] West we have a lot of Forest Service land, so even if there’s not a national park or wilderness nearby you can always go to the National Forest to go looking for wildlife.

Everyone in their wildlife-watching journey starts somewhere. When I started out birdwatching, and still to this day, I go to community parks. Those are great, safe locations for people to start at. It can be intimidating, especially if you’re going on your own to go out into the forest by yourself. It’s better to work up to that. I travel all the time, and I am oftentimes birding in parking lots.

Do you have any tips for capturing birds in motion?

One thing that’s really cool with phones is you can film and take photos at the same time. If a bird is flying and it’s an action shot, I’ll use one hand to follow the bird in motion with the scope, and then my other hand snapping photos while my phone is videoing.

Identifying birds can be difficult for first-timers. What’s a good way to ID different species?

I use the Merlin Bird app, which I just have on my phone. You can download the region that you’re in and then it has photos of birds that occur in the region. It has pretty good information on their range, on their habitat, and has recordings of their songs and calls. The app is really great if you’re in an area that’s new or even if you’re new to birding. That’s a great way to learn. They also have a great way of breaking down what birds look like. When you get better at birding you learn the classification of birds, and that helps figure out what type of bird you’re looking at to later ID it. If you’re an international traveler, Birds of the World is good.

Finally, we know it’s important to respect the wildlife we’re observing. How can we be ethical while still getting an amazing shot? Are things like bird feeders or bird baths okay?

When we’re out on tour, we try to be as ethical as possible, [which means] observing a bird, or whatever animal we’re looking at without actually changing its behavior. We want to be observing its natural behavior. One thing that’s great about the scopes is you can actually view them from a pretty far distance. I have filmed wolves with the scope from two miles away.

I encourage people to attract birds to their yard and to attract nature to their yard. As far as the ethics of that, we want to make sure that we’re feeding the birds high-quality forage [and that] we’re not just giving them bleached seeds, or chemical-ridden seeds. We also want to make sure that we’re not attracting dangerous or controversial wildlife to our yards. If you’re in an area like Wyoming, you have to be really careful with bird feeders because of bears.

You could set up a blind—a barrier where the birds can’t see you but you can see them. It could be super simple, it could be like setting a bird feeder outside of your living room window and watching the bird from your living room window with the scope or the binoculars. 

As far as ethics, it’s always important when you’re taking photos and videos of animals to be really careful with location tagging. I post a lot of photos of animals that I see on tour to my social media. I always tag it, if it’s in Jackson, Wyoming, “Keep Jackson wild,” and then the tag is “Downtown Jackson Hole,” even though that’s clearly not where I saw the animal. That’s just to say, “Yes, I saw it in Jackson Hole, but I’m not going to give you its exact location.” 

We don’t want to disturb [the animals], we don’t want to chase animals off their nests. Even locally, for birds that are endangered, you want to be careful tagging those locations. Because then it can disturb your local wildlife and your local breeding birds.

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Woodpeckers lead a pretty high-impact lifestyle. When they smash their beaks against trees, they’re subjected to forces that would easily knock a person silly. Many ornithologists have assumed that the shape and composition of woodpecker skulls have evolved to dampen this shock, but a new analysis indicates that the birds don’t have—or need—this kind of protection. 

Researchers filmed three species of captive woodpeckers pounding away, and found that their heads behave like “stiff hammers” to peck as efficiently as possible. If the birds had shock-absorbing skulls, the hardware would just get in the way, the team concluded. What’s more, because woodpecker brains are so small, they don’t sustain the kind of damage that a human would endure from similar impacts, the authors reported today in Current Biology.

“It seems like actually the impacts are not as severe as people had just assumed,” says Wesley Hochachka, an ecologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology who wasn’t involved in the research.

Woodpeckers drum into trees to find food, build nests, and communicate during the breeding season. “This is basically what the woodpeckers need to do to survive, so if they’re not sleeping and they’re not resting, they are probably pecking on something,” Hochachka says. “There’s no respite from it at all.”

[Related: How polygamy makes acorn woodpeckers master survivalists]

When a woodpecker strikes its beak into tree bark, its head abruptly decelerates. This kind of impact can cause brain tissue at the front of the skull to compress while tissue at the back is pulled away from the braincase, says Sam Van Wassenbergh, a biomechanist at the University of Antwerp in Belgium and coauthor of the paper. 

“It’s a logical thing to expect that woodpeckers are adapted to not get any headaches, or to not get a concussion during their daily activities,” he says. 

Many researchers believed that woodpeckers have some kind of cushioning in their skulls that acts like an airbag or helmet. Some proposed that spongy bone between the beak and braincase, or muscles surrounding the beak, could minimize the shock from the impact. 

But this idea presents a paradox. “The birds accelerate their head up to a certain speed, giving it this movement energy they want to transfer to the tree to damage or hit away parts of the bark,” Van Wassenbergh says. Yet a shock-absorbing skull would also lessen the energy that reaches the tree. “People don’t use hammers that have a shock absorber built into it; it just makes hammering quite inefficient,” Van Wassenbergh explains further.

To get to the bottom of the mystery, the researchers captured more than 100 high-speed videos of six individuals from three species pecking as fast as about 16 feet per second. The birds—black, pileated, and great spotted woodpeckers—covered a range of body sizes and geographies. The team tracked the movements of several points on the beak, eye, and skull to understand the movement of the braincase. 

“If there would be any shock absorbed, either by beak movement or in this spongy bone zone, you would expect that the brain has a slower deceleration than the beak,” Van Wassenbergh says. “There was actually no difference between the beak and the brain in terms of these movement patterns, which means that [their heads] function as kind of a stiff hammer. It makes sense if you want to optimize your pecking performance.” 

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The researchers next used computer models to explore how a shock-absorbing zone between the beak and braincase would actually affect the birds’ pecking abilities. They calculated that such padding would significantly reduce the penetration of the beak into wood.

“With these data we show that it’s a pure waste of energy to have a shock absorber there,” Van Wassenbergh says. “You could achieve the same effect as a shock absorber by just hitting the tree less violently.”

Finally, he and his collaborators investigated what might be preventing the woodpeckers from becoming concussed. Using computer simulations of a water-filled cavity to represent avian and human brains, they found that woodpeckers aren’t subjected to as much damaging pressure as a bulkier human brain would be if it experienced the same deceleration. 

“”For humans we know approximately when a concussion can be expected, and we used this as a reference to compare the pressure loading for the woodpeckers.” Van Wassenbergh says. “The [birds] still have some safety margin before they would get a concussion.” In fact, the woodpeckers would need to hit the wood twice as fast as observed, or hammer into wood four times stiffer than they typically encounter, to suffer this kind of injury.

Van Wassenbergh notes, this isn’t the first time that researchers have raised the idea that woodpeckers don’t need special protection against brain trauma but his team’s dataset offers a more detailed picture of how the industrious birds smash their heads on tree trunks without injuring themselves. The experiments also indicate that the creatures aren’t a great source of inspiration for helmets and other protective materials.

[Related: We have no idea how dangerous football really is]

Once caveat to the study: The calculations were meant to emulate a woodpecker’s normal activities, but don’t address what might happen if the bird were to peck a metal pole or other unyielding material, Van Wassenbergh acknowledges. The researchers are now studying how beak shape optimizes pecking performance, and how woodpeckers manage to dislodge their beaks when they get stuck. 

The data are “pretty convincing,” says John Bates, a curator of birds at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, but don’t rule out the possibility that routine pecking could give rise to some brain damage over time. Researchers have previously reported that deceased woodpeckers had protein buildups in their skulls similar to those seen in humans with neurodegenerative diseases and chronic brain injury. It’s unclear if the proteins are actually a sign of brain damage in woodpeckers like the way they are in people, though. 

Another question for future research is whether the new findings translate to other avian groups, Bates says. His team studies kingfishers, which can dive straight down into the water at speeds of up to 25 miles per hour. “Woodpeckers are definitely pretty unique,” he says, “but they’re not the only things that do some hammering.”

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The piping plover is a sight to behold on a sandy coast—if you can even spot it. Its delicate, 7-inch frame is small even within the shorebird family, and its muted feathers match the sand it nests on. Unfortunately, the bird’s preferred breeding grounds have been under duress around the Great Plains sandbars, Atlantic Coast, and Great Lakes shores. This has led to the coastal populations being listed as threatened, while the inland populations are considered endangered.

This species’ struggle against human activity and flooding makes the story of Monty and Rose, a celebrity plover couple from the north side of Chicago, that much more important. After nesting and summering on Lake Michigan for three summers, this May, Monty unexpectedly died from a fungal respiratory infection. Rose has also not been seen since she flew off to Florida last winter. Still, their story has continued to resonate nationwide in birding circles and locals’ hearts.

Monty and Rose found their home on Chicago’s Montrose Beach in 2019 after failing to mate in a suburban parking lot. Their choice of real estate was unlikely for several reasons. Before them, no piping plover had built a nest in Chicago in more than 70 years. When dedicated conservation efforts began in the 1980s, only 11 to 14 pairs of the birds even lived on the Great Lakes, all within the state of Michigan. (Today there are roughly 70 across all five lakes.) In addition, Montrose Beach is a popular urban beach for swimmers, kayakers, volleyball players, and even a planned 2019 music festival that was canceled out of concern for Monty and Rose. 

[Related: How to start birding in any US city]

Sarah Saunders, a quantitative ecologist with the National Audubon Society who has worked with piping plovers since 2010, says that the birds might breed in high-traffic areas for numerous reasons. They typically begin nest-building in mid-April before summer weather draws out beachgoers. Once their eggs are laid and hatched, large crowds of people keep predators like falcons at bay. “There’s not a shortage of predators that will go after plover,” Saunders says. “And if we don’t locate a nest and put an exclosure on it, a lot of those predators go after the eggs.”

With their proximity to Chicagoans, the mating pair generated a buzz in the city almost on arrival. Bob Dolgan, a local filmmaker, produced a documentary about the Cook County couple after recording the beginnings of Monty’s mating behavior. 

“It just was kind of mind boggling to me that these birds are going to attempt to nest there on the beach, which is probably the busiest in Chicago,” Dolgan says. “That was really how it started. The story just snowballed from there.”

Both Dolgan and Saunders agree that the outpouring of support in Chicago was incredible to see. Every piping plover nest across the Great Lakes is monitored by a network of volunteers and employees from Audubon societies, state natural resource departments, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, Birds Canada, universities, and more. Saunders describes the effort to protect the nests as “incredible,” with plover pals tracking chicks, educating beachgoers, and installing exclosures to deter predators. Dolgan says that there was no shortage of Chicagoans ready to spend their days watching over Monty and Rose.

“That’s one of the astonishing things to me, as someone has been involved in a lot of nonprofit causes and organizations through the years,” he adds. “It just was so exciting to so many people that it just has never been hard to find volunteers, which I think says a lot about Chicago’s conservation community.” 

[Related: The future of American conservation lies in restoration, not just protection]

The enthusiasm sustained the avian couple through many successful breeding seasons. The birds faced a storm with gale-force winds in June 2019, and years of unpredictable water levels in Lake Michigan. Still, Saunders remembers that through any threat (including when volunteers put ID tags on chicks), Monty would always defend his family. “He clearly was very dedicated,” she says.

Although Monty and Rose are no longer around, Saunders has been moved by the Chicago camaraderie and support for the birds. She says that in her travels, people states away know the piping plovers’ names and now understand the importance of the species. “They’ve contributed offspring genetically to the population, which as a scientist, [is] something we’d love to see,” she notes. “But it’s also what they’ve done in terms of outreach and education for people, too. And even though they’re gone, that doesn’t mean that other future plovers won’t find Montrose Beach and nest there again.”

Compared to when Monty and Rose first arrived on Lake Michigan’s shores, piping plovers in the area now have a dedicated, educated fanbase. The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, a multi-agency protection plan for the region, has helped nurture the piping plover population from fewer than a dozen annual mating pairs up to 75. The USFWS wants to reach 150 breeding pairs.

As dozens of baby piping plovers scurry over beaches, Saunders says that people grow more excited and knowledgeable about the species. “That’s only going to help continue their recovery and help us reach the federal goal over time,” she says. Monty and Rose’s story helped fuel what Saunders calls “the plover fever,” still spreading through the documentaries, shirts, and tributes of the small birds’ giant community.

The post Remembering Monty and Rose, the Chicago shorebirds that became the face of a movement appeared first on Popular Science.

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Update (June 13, 2022): Today the Federal Aviation Administration announced that to move forward with the Starship launch, SpaceX will have to make more than 75 changes to its proposed plan to further reduce environmental disruptions in Boca Chica, Texas. Some of those requirements involve closer collaboration with biologists and other experts from federal agencies. Approval of the launch license is contingent on these changes, though on Twitter, SpaceX hinted that it was still on schedule for the first launch test.

After years of development, the SpaceX Starship is rumbling to life for its first big launch. But before the 164-foot-tall rocket can lift off into space, the company, headed by Elon Musk, has to make it through some final regulatory hurdles.

The launch is set to take place at Boca Chica, located at the southernmost tip of Texas and surrounded by state parks and wildlife refuge. The nature of its operations has raised concerns about potential harm to wildlife species, especially to threatened shorebirds, in the region. SpaceX has also bought out dozens of people’s homes to make them relocate, and caused other residents to evacuate during tests.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is currently completing a final environmental assessment of the site and was expected to reach a decision on May 31. However, the agency pushed back the deadline for a sixth time and is now expected to finalize the review on June 13. It said SpaceX had made multiple changes to its application that required additional FAA analysis.

Last month, the FAA released 17,000 comments, some of which raise concerns about the SpaceX project’s impact on endangered species and the nearby Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. The company filed permits to develop an additional 17.6 acres of wetlands next to its existing Starbase facility—the size of the entire affected area will likely be much larger. Boca Chica is one of the most important shorebird sites along the entire Gulf Coast, says David Newstead, director of the Coastal Bend Bays and Estuaries Program’s (CBBEP) Coastal Bird Program in South Texas. It also serves as a critical site on the Central Flyway, connecting migratory birds between North and South America.

“There’s been repeated explosions [at the testing site], many of which have spread debris into the surrounding wildlife refuge and state park habitat,” Newstead says. “And the SpaceX properties are immediately adjacent to occupied, heavily used, important shorebird habitat.”

[Related: Project Icarus is creating a living map of Earth’s animals]

The CBBEP’s monitoring efforts show that in Boca Chica, piping plovers—a federally threatened shorebird species—declined from an estimated population of 327 in 2018 to 214 in 2020. But the population recorded a slight uptick to 276 in 2021. These changes correlate with the start and stop of launch testing at the site, Newstead says. SpaceX first started manufacturing and locally testing its Starship rocket systems in 2018.

“There was a small increase [in piping plovers] this past winter, but not recovered to the extent that they were previously,” Newstead adds. “Notably, from August 2021 until April 2022, there’s been no more launch testing.”

Besides tracking piping plover populations, the CBBEP also monitors nesting snowy plovers and Wilson’s plovers at Boca Chica. These birds have mostly disappeared from the area and seem to avoid nesting in sites close to the launch site, Newstead says. 

The US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has also determined that SpaceX’s continued activity in Boca Chica will impact animals protected under the Endangered Species Act. Among those of the greatest concern are red knot shorebirds and the jaguarundi and ocelot wild cats. Marine life is also in danger, including the Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle, which nests on the beaches of Boca Chica and is the world’s most critically endangered sea turtle.

The SpaceX launch site could threaten wildlife populations by causing direct injury or death through explosions and tests. USFWS and other entities have also noted that heat, pressure, and debris from launch testing that began in 2018 could harm species or drive them away from critical habitat. But the judgment on SpaceX’s environmental impact is ultimately in the hands of the FAA. 

“I am optimistic that we will get approval [from the FAA],” Musk said this February, as reported by Spaceflight News. “Objectively, I think this is not something that will be harmful to the environment. We’ve obviously flown the [Starship spacecraft] several times … We’ve fired the engines a lot. I think the reality is that it would not have a significant impact.”

[Related: SpaceX Starships keep exploding, but it’s all part of Elon Musk’s plan]

SpaceX is shooting for a 2023 launch of its Starship spacecraft, which is designed for voyages to the moon and Mars. If the FAA decides to require a new environmental impact statement from the company, it would cause a setback of six to eight months, Musk said earlier this year. In that case, SpaceX plans to shift its Starship launch operation to the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, where the company has already received the environmental approval it needs.

Newstead says although it is not uncommon for regulatory agencies to delay their decisions, the number of FAA postponements around the SpaceX project does stand out.

“I would assume that the extent of the delays is a testimony to the number of stumbling blocks the agency is facing in authorizing this type of activity,” he says. “If it was benign, [SpaceX] would have had their permit a long time ago.”

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This article was originally featured on High Country News.

A dead seal washes ashore in Northern California. Ravens and turkey vultures peck at its eyes and tail end, but they’re not strong enough to break into the blubbery carcass. For that they’d need the help of the Western Hemisphere’s largest land-based bird: the condor. With feathers as long as your femur and the body weight of a human preschooler, a condor can hold down a big carcass and rip into it with the torque of its meat hook-shaped beak. It may seem macabre from a Western perspective, but condors clean up with an efficiency other animals—including humans—cannot match. It’s one reason the Yurok Tribe has spent over a decade working to bring them home. 

To the Yurok people, the California condor, whose Yurok name is preygoneesh, embodies the spirit of renewal. It heads the scavenger sanitation crew: When preygoneesh eats, so does everybody. But preygoneesh has been absent from this beach for over a century. The ravens and vultures have to look elsewhere for a meal. The seal carcass bloats in the sun, wasted.

Preygoneesh’s decline accompanied Americans’ push Westward in the mid-1800s, a manifest casualty of the usual suspects: habitat destruction, novelty hunting by collectors and killings out of misplaced fear. Preygoneesh once ranged from what’s now called Mexico to British Columbia, from the Pacific to New York. The birds can travel 100-200 miles per day on 9.5-foot wingspans that can take them to 15,000 feet (2.8 miles), even higher than eagles. But by the 1980s, only 22 were left, their range diminished like a reservation to a sliver of skies over central and Southern California. Because they declined so early, Western scientists were never able to study healthy condor populations in the wild. What their thriving looks like is a mystery.

Except to Indigenous communities like the Yurok. 

On an unusually wintry day in late March, snowflakes piled on redwood boughs, fluffy and silent one hour, slushy and dumpy the next. But Yurok Wildlife Department Director Tiana Williams was confident the tribe’s four adolescent condors could handle the weather. They’d just arrived from the Ventana Wildlife Society in Monterey, which held them while the tribe finished constructing its own condor pen.

Tribal Chair Joseph L. James spoke to the press while snare hits of slush plopped on the overhead canopy. “It is a historical moment in the Yurok Tribe, as we introduce our condors back home to fly back above the sky, providing that balance for us,” he said. Vice Chair Frankie Myers followed, saying it took generations of work, and fulfills the dream of Yurok grandparents. “This is how government is supposed to represent its people,” Myers said.

Standing alongside tribal leadership were Redwood National Park Superintendent Steven Mietz and Victor Bjelajac, superintendent of California State Parks’ North Coast Redwoods District, representatives of the tribe’s original condor restoration partners. Numerous other agencies joined later, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which sent staff out to help build the tribe’s condor facility.

The historic day arrived with the help of some unlikely partners, too. PG&E, the power company whose equipment started the Dixie Fire last summer, donated $200,000 to the Yurok condor restoration program. Pacific Power, whose parent company owns the Klamath River dams the Yurok have been fighting to remove, is also involved. Then there are local dairy farmers who donate stillborn calves to feed the fledglings. The tribe even approached timber companies, although, according to Mietz, logging and other industries have damaged two-thirds of Redwood National and State Parks, part of the Yurok’s ancestral homelands.

“As we heal this landscape and we bring back the condors, and we start to restore the previous majestic glory of the redwood forest, we’re also healing the relationship with each other, and repairing our relationship with the original Indigenous people,” said Mietz. “We’re following their lead in how to manage the park, to restore this very damaged landscape.”

The tribe and its partners built the holding pen from shipping containers, in part because they’re fireproof. (In 2020, a California wildfire killed 12 condors.) The facility is tucked away in a discreet location and surrounded by electrified fencing. This protects preygoneesh not just from roaming predators, but from a well-meaning public, said biologist Chris West, the tribe’s lead condor program manager, flashing a still-red finger wound where a feisty fledgling took a chunk just days before.

A mentor bird—an 8-year-old adult condor, distinguishable by its bald red head—mingled with the adolescents. “If you just threw a bunch of teenagers into an area and expected them to behave themselves, at some point you might want to throw an elder in there to straighten them out a little bit,” West explained. “That’s kind of what’s going on with our mentor bird.”

Condors are social animals, with a literal pecking order that includes other, smaller scavengers. In the wild, a condor’s parents follow it around to teach it; here, the mentor plays that role. Bait outside the pen attracts turkey vultures and ravens, allowing the condors to get used to the animals they’ll dine with in the wild.

The adolescents, a female and three males, are 2 to 3 years old. Some hatched at the Oregon Zoo, others at the World Center for Birds of Prey in Boise. And after their stay in Monterey, they needed to acclimate to Yurok country and socialize for a few weeks before release. There was no rush, said West. “We’re on condor time.”

Adult condors reproduce slowly, laying just one egg every two years. And they face one extremely lethal adversary. Lead poisoning from ammunition, which contributed to preygoneesh’s decline, remains their number-one killer, accounting for half of all known wild condor mortalities. A piece of lead the size of a pinhead can paralyze pregoneesh’s powerful gastrointestinal system, causing an agonizing death. “There’s some indication that if we were able to get rid of the lead problem,” Williams said, “that we could potentially stop managing condors.”

California banned lead ammo in 2019. Nevertheless, 13 condors died in the wild last year from lead poisoning. The tribe reached out to hunters with information about alternatives, like copper ammunition. “Anywhere from 85%-95% of hunters we talked to came to our events, saying, ‘I had no idea, and of course I’ll make the switch to non-lead,’” Williams said. “I’m not surprised by that, being a hunter myself, coming from a hunting family.”

Hunters, like dairy farmers, utility operators, loggers, and park superintendents, all seem to want preygoneesh to succeed. Yet it’s the Yurok’s leadership that has brought these unexpected allies together in the name of renewal.

According to Williams, the Yurok people’s fundamental reason for being is to keep the world renewed and in balance. She said preygoneesh is a critical part of the Yurok’s 10-day Jump Dance, a world-renewal ceremony that uses preygoneesh feathers and songs. Every other year, before the ninth full moon, participants fast and pray, dance and sweat. “We pray for our river, we pray for our streams, we pray for our salmon,” Chair James told HCN. “We pray for our condor to come home.”

On a morning in early May, the Yurok’s livestream showed two of the fledglings hopping to the edge of the release door and taking wing past a bait carcass. They’ll build their mental map around this location as a key place to return to for food and socializing.

The tribe won’t stop with these four birds: A new cohort arrives later this year, and West hopes to release four to six birds every year for the next 20 years, 80 to 120 birds from this site altogether.

“Our prayers are answered. They’re coming home now,” James said with a smile. “It’d be icing on the cake, being able to dance and have a condor fly over us. It’ll happen.”   

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Tartufo, the rosy-faced lovebird, has more limbs than you think. He’s got two wings, which, of course, he uses to fly. He’s got two legs, which he uses to grab branches and hop around the canopy. But when faced with an especially steep tree, he relies on a third: his head.

Based on climbing experiments published this month in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society Biological Sciences, rosy-faced lovebirds—a type of diminutive parrot—are members of a rare few vertebrates that walk with an odd number of limbs.

Plenty of animals have what the study’s senior author, Michael Granatosky, calls “effective limbs,” like a tail that acts as a tripod. But fewer actually use a spare limb to push or pull themselves along. “Now we’re talking about things that are a lot rarer in evolutionary history,” says Granatosky, who studies the evolution of locomotion at New York Institute of Technology. Kangaroos use their tail like a spring to jump, and spider monkeys climb through trees with a dexterous tail. “But “for the first time with these parrots, [we’ve found] an animal that uses its head as a propulsive limb”

To sort out how parrots use their heads, the team set up a “runway” containing a small pressure sensor that detected pushing and pulling motions. That allowed them to distinguish when a bird was just hanging on for dear life by the mouth, or when it was actually pulling itself along. The six rosy-faced lovebirds in the experiment were all able to do neck-pull-ups to climb.

Granatosky has a pet cockatiel, Rex, says Melody Young, the paper’s lead author, and a graduate student at the New York Institute of Technology. “So he would watch his parrot climbing and think ‘I want those forces.’”

But bigger parrots, like macaws, are tougher study subjects, because they bite hard enough to take a finger off if they’re grumpy. So instead, the team turned to rosy-faced lovebirds as a model because they’re sweet tempered. If anything, says Young, “they’re too friendly.”

“They would climb on you as much as they would climb on the runway,” Granatosky adds. “The hardest part is trying to keep them on there.”

But the lovebirds aren’t defenseless. To climb with their heads, their necks have to be about four times stronger per body weight than ours, and deliver bites with a force fourteen times their body weight. “If they get feisty and we’re not wearing gloves,” says Granatosky, “they can draw some blood.”

The parrots don’t always walk with three limbs. By tilting the runway, the researchers showed that they only began to use their mouths when going up a 45 degree slope, and relied more and more on their head as the runway got steeper.

[Related: Crows and ravens flexed smarts and strength for world dominance]

For the lovebirds, that makes the head a close analogue to the way people use our arms when rock climbing. Right now, Young is planning a series of human experiments involving treadwalls—a short section of rock climbing wall that moves like a treadmill—to understand how both novice and expert rock climbers actually move up a wall. The experiments are a jumping off point to study treatments for people who need to develop shoulder and leg strength, and imagine new ways of building climbing robots.

The sheer oddity of using a head to move hints at something mysterious about the parrot’s brain. When animals move, their brains produce repeating patterns to govern the sequence of steps—“it’s the reason you don’t have to think about walking, right?” says Granatosky. Parrots, unlike other birds that hop up trees, “move just like we do. Everything is left, right, alternating movements.” Being able to incorporate a third, asymmetrical limb movement into that sequence is “weird from an evolutionary perspective,” he says.

Since publishing the paper, Granatosky says that people have reached out with their own stories about tripedal movement—or even head-assisted tree climbing. “The weirdest email was about hunting dogs,” he says. “Dogs that are trained to put animals in trees, a small percentage of them learn to use their head to climb the tree.” As weird as head-propelled climbing seems, it might be more common than evolutionary biologists currently realize.

The post What’s got two legs and a head for climbing? Rosy-faced lovebirds. appeared first on Popular Science.

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Hundreds or even thousands of jackdaws are known to launch into the winter skies at once from the treetops. Now, ecologists know that this synchronized exodus is timed with a sophisticated behavior called “consensus decision-making,” where the group’s majority chooses the birds’ actions.

Jackdaws, Corvus monedula, pitch into the sky in huge numbers come sunrise and then split into smaller groups to feed throughout the day. To figure out how such large numbers of these birds decide when to take off, researchers in the United Kingdom recorded hundreds of hours of their bird calls in Cornwall over several months. They measured when the first jackdaws began their calls, how loud the birds were, and how quickly the swell of calls rose, and then compared these sounds to footage of those birds’ departures. The team found that the jackdaw ensemble left together once the chorus of calls reached a critical mass—the more rapidly the chorus swelled, the earlier the birds left. The findings were published on Monday in Current Biology.

“They all leave together, which is a really striking sight. The sky just suddenly fills with black birds. It’s like a black snowstorm,” Alex Thornton, an ecologist at the University of Exeter, UK, told New Scientist. Every call is a jackdaw casting its vote to leave. “At first you just get a few calls, then more and more birds join in and it builds and it builds, and the steeper that increase, the earlier they leave,” Thornton added. On rare occasions, when the intensity of the chorus doesn’t build enough and the jackdaws don’t agree, the birds instead launch off in “dribs and drabs.”

[Related: Crows and ravens flexed smarts and strength for world dominance]

The team also found that once jackdaws reached consensus they departed almost immediately, with hundreds of individuals taking off in less than five seconds of each other. When scientists played past recordings of calls back to the jackdaws, interfering with the group’s natural crescendo, they were able to push forward the birds’ launching by more than six minutes. The birds did not, however, change their launch times in response to other noise—which means the group is specifically listening for the calls of its members.

The gregarious birds prefer to leave as a group, although “each jackdaw will have a slightly different preference about when they want to leave, based on factors like their size and hunger,” Alex Dibnah, a University of Exeter graduate student and lead author of the study, said in a statement. “Leaving the roost together has various benefits, including safety from predators and access to information such as where to find food.”

This research shows the critical role vocalizations play in group decision-making for this species. One next step for this research, according to the authors, is to figure out how human-created noise pollution might affect this process and the spread of information throughout these communities. 

“Imagine a big roost near a town or busy road,” Thornton said to the BBC. “If the birds can’t hear each other and can’t form a consensus to leave together, it could have big impacts on their population.”

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Excerpt and photographs from Flamingo by Claudio Contreras Koob. Copyright © 2022 by Claudio Contreras Koob. Reprinted by permission of teNeues.

As spring draws to a close, the long wait finally ends with the birth of thousands of flamingos. To document this sensitive process, I had to approach the sandy islet where the birds had settled in complete darkness. From the shore, the murmur of the colony was barely audible, but loud enough for me to estimate that the population was situated some 800 meters away from me, an assessment that I managed to confirm as soon as I crossed the water and mud to reach the islet. Once there, I was surrounded by a plethora of noise.

Crouching down, I sneaked over to a small dune that gave me enough cover to prepare for my final approach. With my equipment ready and myself in camouflage, I crawled as low to the ground as I could towards the birds. Halfway there, I paused, waiting for more light so that I could see the backlit silhouettes of the flamingos, showing me if I could approach and whether they were aware of my presence. If a single flamingo stood up from its nest, that would tell me that it didn’t feel safe, so I would have to stop and retreat. From that point on, I proceeded very slowly and carefully—at no point did I want to disturb the colony.

My patience paid off: by sunrise, I found myself relatively close to the nests. The adults were busy preening their feathers, starting the new day quite relaxed. The cacophony of the colony was deafening. Suddenly, an adult sitting on a nest began to stir strangely, as if something was bothering it. It composed itself and returned to sitting on the nest. As it adjusted itself, I could see a small, white head trying to peer out through the orange feathers. Surrounded by a sea of orange consisting of about 15,000 nests, I imagined that this little creature must have thought that the world was orange.

Frail and curious, the chick managed to stick out its beak. The tip of its beak was a little lighter: it was the egg tooth, a small protrusion used specifically to breakthrough the shell and it would disappear soon after hatching. The chick quickly moved on to the most important activity of its short life: it begged for food from anyone who was around. Through my telephoto lens, I could see it asking for food. Despite my distance from the nest and through all the excitement around me, I could make out the adult being called by the nestling; each flamingo has a unique screech by which adults and their young can identify each other within a colony.

The adult responded by holding the chick’s head between its wing and body, while at the same time, moving its neck and jaw to regurgitate food for its young. Coordination was not easy for the nestling when it could barely hold its head up, but when both beaks managed to touch, I could see a red liquid pouring from the tip of one into the other, as if life itself was being passed from parent to offspring.

The red fluid that fed the nestling is called crop milk. Both adults produce this secretion in the upper part of the intestine. Incredibly, after only a few days of having been fed the crop milk, the chick was wandering around the nest, flapping its little, white down-covered wings, while the adult desperately tried to keep it within the borders of its nest.

This phase is the most dangerous in the life of a flamingo, because although its legs are thick and provide it with good support, the chick itself is very unstable. After barely five days of its life in the nest, it is bored and wants more freedom to roam, but the parents know that a fall from the nest can cause it to break a leg or a wing, thus endangering its chances of survival.

[Related: 8 ‘insignificant’ creatures that will make you dream about the ocean]

The next morning, I waited in the same spot for the sun to rise. Earlier on, I could sense a subtle but constant movement from within the colony: it was the adults’ turn to leave the nest. All together they moved slowly forward, preening at times, along the same route. With each stride, they traversed avenues invisible at ground level, until they reached the colony’s edge. From there, they would take off in search for food. I was also fortunate to witness the reverse process: the adults returning to the colony, entering and disappearing into the orange labyrinth with the knowledge of the exact whereabouts of their own offspring.

A few days later, I returned to the same spot and saw one of the adults trying to contain its increasingly adventurous nestling by holding it between the legs with its beak, trying to force it to sit down. In the end, what the adult had tried so hard to prevent happened anyway: The nestling made it to the edge of the nest. It took a big step towards freedom, and rolled down the mud walls to the ground.

Luckily, everything turned out well: the chick was upside down on the ground, but it was okay. It quickly sat up and began to explore its surrounding world with its beak. It discovered pebbles, small shells and pieces of eggshell as it wandered around the alleys that separated its nest from those of its neighbors. Everything was new for the young animal. For the first time, its legs experienced the sensation of wading through water; something this bird will do for the rest of its life. Finally having satisfied its curiosity, the chick returned to the nest; or rather it precariously scaled the high, volcano-like walls of the nest using its beak and wings to stabilize itself while pushing upwards with its sturdy, pink legs.

At ten days old, the nestling’s restricted life in the nest was over. It left its nest, never to return to it. At that age, when its down feathers were replaced by grey ones, it wanted to wander the clay streets, to explore every little corner of the orange city with its peers, with whom it formed a crèche or nursery. The little members of this nursery mimicked the behavior of the adults: dipping their beaks into the water as if to filter something and moving them from side to side as they waded through the puddles that had formed around the nests in recent days. At one point, the chicks suddenly decided all together to abandon their expedition and take a different route, and this new route led straight to where I was positioned. I didn’t know what I would do when faced with these innocent little birds which were heading towards me. Luckily, the adults in charge of them stepped in just in time and herded them back to the safety of the colony.

Time flew. Almost two months later, there were only a few inhabited nests and the crèche had grown. Those that were previously chicks were now bigger and covered with plumage, and they kept flapping their wings. The more advanced fledglings, on the other hand, were able to fly a few meters above the water before crash-landing.

The parents had to be very patient when it came to feeding the fledglings because their young were insatiable. To show their dissatisfaction, they would circle the adults and scream at them, despite their seemingly submissive posture. They wanted more and when they didn’t get anything, they stamped around angrily in the water. Unsurprisingly, when an adult had no food for its fledgling, it would escape these tantrums in the only way in which it still had an advantage over its young: by flying away.

Unfortunately, I also saw the lonely chicks roaming around with their wings hanging down; the consequences of a hard fall. Because they were no longer able to fly, their growth was obviously slower. Faced with the lack of mobility, they tried to raise their broken wings with the support of a leg, but to no avail; their fates were sealed.

Towards the end of summer, most of the offspring were able to fly and so the young birds dispersed in all directions. In the three years it took them to become adults, they dedicated their time to gaining experience. It is still not clear whether flamingos simply like to travel or if they have been displaced by the experienced adults from areas that are rich in food, but some have been sighted in the United States, the Cayman Islands and Cuba. Throughout that period of time and up to the age of six years when they have their first offspring, they must learn several lessons: the importance of staying close to the breeding grounds, identifying the best foraging areas and acquiring the skills in terms of couple coordination as it has been shown that those who venture into parenting too soon, fail.

The adults in turn leave the colony after the nesting period to regain strength at their preferred feeding areas along the Yucatán coast. In contrast to when they came to settle in the colony, their plumage looks discolored. The whitish coloring on the head, neck and back comes from the fact that the pigments that once made them so beautiful during their stay in the breeding colony were now destined to fulfill other functions, such as an antioxidant, within the body.

[Related: Songbirds near the equator really are hotter, color-wise]

The day finally came when dawn at the nesting colony was silent; it was strange to be present in the calm after so many months of commotion. The flamingos had left a landscape that resembled something out of a science fiction novel. It felt strange to walk through the alleys which, only until recently, were off-limits, an orange hubbub of noisy activity. Having had the privilege to spend so much time there, it felt bittersweet. On the one hand, walking past the empty nests, I recalled all the birds that had once filled them with life. On the other hand, I could also recall those who had left that one lonely egg in its nest.

If conservation continues to move in the right direction, I know that the calm will be short-lived and also necessary, given the fact that the next surge of colors won’t belong in coming. My greatest wish is that someday, the flamingos will allow me to be with them once again.

Buy Flamingo here.

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Crows are seen as a commanding symbol around the world, including as a sacred animal in Aboriginal culture and as a harbinger of death in Ancient Greece. The birds have played a prominent role in several cultures due to their widespread presence—about 40 species occupy Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and North and Central America. Now a new study from the Washington University in St. Louis, published on April 21 in the journal Nature Communications, finds that there is good reason to believe in the power of crows and their raven kin, aside from their spiritual meaning. 1

Evolutionary biologist Joan Garcia-Porta’s team found that crows and ravens, both in the corvid family, expanded their range and evolved into various species quickly. After spanning almost the entire globe between 22 to 18 million years ago, the crows and ravens were exposed to new environments. To survive in these different niches, members of the genus Corvus experienced high rates of adaptation and species diversification roughly 10 million years ago. How the birds were able to do this, however, was a central question in the study.

Crows and ravens are renowned for their unique skill sets. Studies have shown that ravens have similar cognitive abilities to adult apes and can mimic human speech. Meanwhile, crows are happier when using tools and are able to recognize human faces. But Garcia-Porta’s study focused on the physical adaptations that allowed corvids to disperse and diversify better than other birds, including elongated wings and large bodies that proved advantageous when competing for resources with other avian species. 

[Related: Why are crows and ravens such jerks?]

After establishing the contributing factors of geographic spread, the researchers analyzed the individual characteristics of 46 crow and raven species to examine their physical diversity. The team used modeling software to tease out the genes and traits behind beak sizes, brain volume, and femur lengths, among other variables. The results showed that the highest rates of diversification in crows and ravens matched up with habitat and climatic expansion. The species also adapted quicker than any other prehistoric or modern birds included in the comparison. 

“When we think about processes of global diversification, it is important to consider not just the ability to reach new places, but also the ability to survive once you get there. Our work suggests that crows and the ravens diversified both quickly and widely because they were particularly good at coping with different habitats,” Carlos Botero, a biologist at Washington University in St. Louis  and co-author of the study, said in a press release.

The authors note that the exact reasons behind these processes are still not known. A large brain mass to body size ratio, however, provides a greater ability to innovate and learn new behaviors, which might have helped crows and ravens survive for longer in new environments. Combined with the physical abilities that allowed them to reach new habitats with a variety of niches, the study could hold the real answers behind the corvid conquest.

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In honor of Earth Month—and Earth Day later this week—we’re celebrating the best way we know how: with a series of stories that are all about getting outside and getting your hands dirty to benefit wild places and wildlife. Every day this week, we’ll share articles about habitat projects, gear-repair tips, and conservation calls-to-action. Welcome to Dirt Week.

At the end of the 19^th century, wood ducks were thought to be the most abundant waterfowl species on the continent. By the end of the 20^th, they were on the brink of extinction in America through a combination of market gunning, logging, and land development. So, what do you have to thank for the fact that woodies still come squealing into your spread? Two things for the most part: The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 and wood duck boxes.

Wood ducks evolved to nest in tree cavities, but as large swaths of bottomland timber was cleared and swamps drained, natural tree cavities became scarce. Enter the wood duck box. The first attempt to use them on a large scale came in 1937, when the U.S. Biological Survey erected nearly 500 slab-wood boxes in central Illinois. The second attempt deployed 700 boxes, also in Illinois—and nearly half were used to hatch and rear ducklings. It was proof that the concept worked, and baby wood ducks have been leaping safely out of nesting boxes since.

Today, you can still boost the local population of woodies—and even the regional numbers with the help of other conservation-minded sportsmen–by building a simple nesting box. If properly placed, it will provide a home for generations of ducks, and ducks for generations of sportsmen. There are lots of nesting-box building plans out there, all with slight variations, but the one below, which comes from Ducks Unlimited, is my favorite. The straight roof of this box is just easier to build, compared to slanted versions like the one in the photo above. Also, whereas some boxes open at the top, the side door of this version makes it much easier to access the bottom of the box to replace wood shavings when the time comes. So, let’s get started. Here are step-by-step instructions.

1) Get the lumber

The first wood duck boxes were made of bark-covered slab-wood, and with current lumber prices, that’s still a good option. Its rough surface provides good footing for baby ducks to climb on, and lumber mills often give it away for free. If you’re going to use finished boards, untreated pine is fine, but cedar is better, as it will last longer outdoors. (Avoid pressure-treated lumber.) Cedar also has a rough side for better baby-duck footing. In any case, you want to start with a 12-foot 1×10, or the equivalent.

2) Crosscut to the right dimensions

Crosscut the 1×10 into the proper lengths. You’ll need a 31-inch board for the back of the box. Three 23.5-inch lengths for the sides. A 14-incher for the top. And a 7.75-inch length for the bottom. Mark each board at “back,” “front,” “left side,” etc. so it’s easy to keep track. If you’re using cedar, make sure the rough side goes on the inside of the box.

3) Mark and cut out the hole

On the outer face of the front, mark out an oval-shaped entry hole 3.25 inches down from the top that is 4.5 inches wide and 3.5 inches high. Use a jig saw to make the cut. Over many years of trial and error, managers have landed on these dimension as the perfect-size hole, as it is big enough for adult ducks to get in, but too small for nest-raiding raccoons to get in.

4) Make a series of kerf cuts

Now, turn the same board over, and, starting just below the hole, score the interior face with shallow horizontal cuts close together. These will give ducklings a toe-hold for climbing up and out of the box.

5) Attached the first side of the box

Attach the first side panel with using three or four 1-5/8-inch wood screws driven through the back as shown. The back should extend beyond the side by 3.75 inches or so, top and bottom.

6) Make drainage holes in the bottom

Using a ½-inch bit, drill five holes in the floor for drainage. Attach the floor with two screws through the back and two through the side. Then attach the front panel of the box to the side and bottom pieces.

7) Attach the last side and the top

Bevel the top outer edge of final side, or round it with a sander or file. Then attach it at the top only with one screw through the front board and one through the back. These screws will act as hinges, allowing this side to function as a door that swings open. Drill a small hole through the bottom right of the front piece and into the side of the door. Insert a nail of a slightly smaller diameter to pin the door shut.

8) Put up your wood duck box

Finally, attached the roof and put 6 inches of wood shavings (not sawdust) in the bottom and place the box directly above the water or along the water’s edge by fixing it to a tree or a metal pole. Be sure to include a predator guard to keep raccoons and rat snakes and the like out. A conical metal flange or sheet work well, as does a simple section of 8-inch-diameter PVC pipe. Keep the box at a height you can reach, say 5 feet, as you will need to replace the wood shavings yearly. Then get ready to see more wood ducks along your local creeks and ponds.

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The label “parasite” might bring to mind images of hookworms, leeches, or ticks. However, the African cuckoo finch is a different kind of freeloader. These birds like to dump their parenting responsibilities onto other birds. They do so by mastering a clever trick: egg mimicry—deceiving other bird species to care for their young chicks by laying similar-looking eggs in nests. 

This “social” or “brood” parasitic behavior is quite widespread in birds, says Claire Spottiswoode, professor at the University of Cambridge. In a study published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Spottiswoode and a team of researchers found information on the inheritance of egg mimicry genes. 

“It’s actually evolved seven times independently in different groups of birds,” says Spottiswoode. “It’s a total of about 100 bird species, about 1 percent of all the world’s birds. It’s also evolved in quite a lot of insect species and in one fish.”

Cuckoo finches are not actually cuckoos, despite their name. The term refers to the shared behavior of egg mimicry with some cuckoo species, most notably the parasitic European cuckoo. The small, slender bird is an obligate parasite, meaning it relies on this behavior to survive. Different cuckoo finches target different species, too. Some lay blue eggs with brown specks to match the eggs of the red-faced cisticola, while others lay mottled pink eggs to match the zitting cisticola. If their eggs are accepted by the nesting bird, then the cuckoo finch does not need to expend the energy required to hatch an egg or care for the young. 

[Related: Songbirds near the equator really are hotter, color-wise]

Michael Sorenson, a co-author of the study and professor at Boston University, describes the evolution of this trait as an “escalating arms race.” As cuckoo finches developed the ability to lay eggs that visually resembled the eggs of another species, the other species adapted to better identify and destroy imposter eggs. Over the last couple million years, every time the host birds improved at spotting imposter eggs, the cuckoo finches would enhance their mimicry abilities. This cycle is an example of the Red Queen hypothesis, named after the antagonist in the novel Through the Looking Glass, explains Sorenson.

“There’s a passage involving the Red Queen and Alice, hand in hand, running as fast as they can and not getting anywhere,” he says. “That’s basically the idea, is that hosts and parasites are continuing to evolve to try to beat the other, but ultimately, they never accomplish anything because they’re both in the race together.

Spottiswoode, who has been studying this evolutionary relationship in birds over the last decade, sought to prove that egg mimicry was an inherited trait. Nearly a century ago,  geneticist Reginald Punnett theorized that the ability to mimic eggs was passed directly from mothers to daughters along a female chromosome, known as the maternal inheritance. The modern accessibility of genomic sequencing enabled researchers to finally prove this theory. 

To conduct this study, the study authors worked with research collaborators, field assistants, and local farmers in Zambia in East Africa to collect nest observation data. They then processed the field reports and DNA samples from cuckoo finches to analyze the sequences. 

“I think that’s an important point to add, that this is just very collaborative, and it wouldn’t have been possible without all these people, especially on the ground, because we basically had to find all these nests on farms,” says Wenfei Tong, an ornithologist and co-author of the study. “Without the permission of the farm owners and the help of a lot of the people who work in the farms, we just wouldn’t have had enough people, or we wouldn’t even have known exactly where to search. It’s quite a skill to find a lot of these nests.”

[Related: Parasitic birds like cuckoos seem to target victims who can’t see well]

While the study was able to supply more evidence that supports maternal inheritance in cuckoo finches through genetic data, the results also indicated that this pattern is perhaps a “double-edged sword” for the birds, says both Sorenson and Tong. Egg mimicry has become necessary for the birds, but the genetic inheritance through moms may be slowing the evolutionary arms race.

“In the process of being able to keep all these special signature adaptations…the cuckoo finches have, in a sense, put themselves in something of a potential evolutionary dead end,” says Tong. “For that particular strategy to work, it means that they lose the benefits of the evolution of sexual reproduction.”

When two parent species sexually reproduce and have offspring, that offspring has a mixture of chromosomes from both parents, producing new gene combinations and evolutionary abilities. This mixing of genes, or genetic recombination, helps increase genetic diversity of a species. But the genes for egg mimicry are passed along maternally, meaning that no genetic recombination can occur. In a race where the host bird species are evolving to better recognize imposter eggs, slower rates of genetic diversity may hinder the cuckoo finch.

“Maternal inheritance seems to hamper rapid evolution,” Spottiswoode says. “It has a downside, when you’re under selection to evolve very quickly, in an arms race with an enemy.”

Ultimately, Spottiswoode says that the results were gratifying in proving the original maternal inheritance hypothesis was correct. Future studies on the genetic evolution of birds will reveal more about the intricate behavior of egg mimicry.

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At least 150 eagles have been found dead at wind farms, and the company to blame isn’t denying it. ESI Energy pled guilty this week to killing scores of raptors over the last decade in Wyoming and New Mexico due to blunt force trauma with turbine blades. As the Washington Examiner reports, the company owns 50 wind farms nationwide, but the Wyoming and New Mexico facilities in particular do not show any record of applying for the proper permits—a process that includes consulting with wildlife specialists for impacts.

 “The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has a long history of working closely with the wind-power industry to identify best practices in avoiding and minimizing the impacts of land-based wind energy facilities on wildlife including eagles,” Edward Grace, USFWS office of law enforcement assistant director, said in a U.S. Department of Justice press release. “This (plea) agreement holds ESI and its affiliates accountable for years of unwillingness to work cooperatively with the Service and their blatant disregard of wildlife laws.”

[Related: Minimizing offshore wind’s impact on nature is tricky, but not impossible]

Raptors are not the only avian species killed by wind turbines, of course, but this case is stands apart because of documented bald and golden eagles kills on unpermitted property. Bald eagles lost the federal protection of the Endangered Species Act when they were delisted in 2007, but both birds of prey are still protected by the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. It’s illegal to injure or kill either without a permit.

The energy company must file permits for all of its facilities in the next three years, and its guilty plea comes with several monetary penalties, including a $1.9 million fine plus $6.2 million in restitution. An even bigger budget ding is spread over the next five years as a probation period with money specifically designated for the birds: ESI must put $27 million toward mitigating future eagle deaths at its wind farms.

“The sentencing today shows our commitment to both maintaining and making sustainable use of our resources,” stated Robert Murray, U.S. district attorney for Wyoming in the press release issued Tuesday. “It also ensures a level playing field for business in Wyoming and ensures those receiving federal tax credits are complying with federal law.”

According to NPR, the energy company is also responsible for eagle deaths at wind farms in Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, and North Dakota.

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While writing of their 19th-century voyages to document the world’s biodiversity, European naturalists like Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace were struck by the appearance of the plants and animals they encountered in the tropics.

“The new organisms that they were observing were, to their eyes at least, incredibly rich and varied in color,” says Christopher Cooney, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Sheffield in England.

Their remarks sparked the controversial notion among scientists that animals and plants living near the equator are more colorful than those found at higher latitudes. But a new report by Cooney and his colleagues demonstrates that, for songbirds at least, this pattern holds true. 

[Related: Hummingbirds can see colors we can’t even imagine]

The researchers scrutinized 4,500-plus species from around the world and found that adult birds that bred in the area between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn boasted a more impressive diversity of colors than those native to other regions. The findings hint at several climactic and social pressures that might underlie the trend, the team reported on April 4 in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. 

“They did a great job of really capturing the breadth of what’s going on across the globe … and showing convincingly that this age-old idea is well-supported,” says Eliot Miller, an ornithologist at Cornell University who wasn’t involved in the research.

The color gradient that Darwin and his peers proposed has remained “shrouded in uncertainty,” Cooney says, for several reasons. Most prior studies have focused on limited geographic regions and used subjective measures of colorfulness, he and his collaborators wrote in the new paper. 

To address the question of how coloration changes with latitude, the team analyzed 4,527 species of passerines—which make up about 60 percent of known avian species and are often referred to as songbirds or perching birds—found in every habitat from the poles to the tropics. The researchers photographed the plumage of male and female specimens from the Natural History Museum at Tring at three different angles in visible light and in ultraviolet light that’s visible to birds. They then used computer algorithms to identify the pigments captured at 1,500 points on each body. “We wanted to generate estimates of colorfulness that are meaningful to the birds themselves,” Cooney says. 

Miller points out that the inclusion of UV makes the analysis more complete. “They can do a better job of describing what birds can see in that way rather than just what we see,” he says.

From there, Cooney and his team measured the number of distinct hues in each individual’s feathers, and concluded that male and female birds near the equator were indeed on average more colorful than their temperate cousins. They estimated that colorfulness increased by roughly 20 to 30 percent from the polar regions towards the tropics.

The most colorful species the researchers examined was the paradise tanager, a small Amazonian songbird whose plumage is a riot of intense blues, greens, reds, and black. Next to the tanager, many high-latitude birds were “uniformly drab,” Cooney says. 

“There are exceptions to the general trend,” he adds. “It isn’t a hard-and-fast rule that there aren’t colorful birds outside the tropics.” The US has a number of colorful birds, including the painted bunting and American redstart.

The kinds of habitats where these colorful birds dwell might shed light on why they developed their vivid displays. Cooney and his colleagues observed that specimens tended to be more colorful in warm, wet environments and dark, enclosed forests. “Those conditions do occur outside of tropical regions and potentially explain why places like the Eastern US … do have very colorful species as well,” Cooney says.

Birds in heavily forested areas might require bright, flashy plumage to catch the attention of other members of their species in the dimly lit understory. What’s more, food is typically more abundant in moist, lush places like tropical rainforests than it is in the tundra and other harsh landscapes. “There’s just more energy available in those environments that organisms can potentially invest in traits that are showy,” Cooney says. It’s also possible that some species acquire the eye-popping pigments in their feathers from fruits and nectars that are more readily available in the tropics than at higher latitudes.

[Related: Can birds smell? This ornithologist is debunking a long-standing myth.]

The researchers further noticed that colorfulness seemed to correlate with the songbird diversity in a habitat. Species in more crowded patches might have evolved to be brighter so potential mates and rivals could differentiate them from their neighbors, Cooney says. 

Still, he emphasizes, additional studies are needed to explore the patterns he and his team documented. “There’s a huge amount more to be learned about the precise ecological and evolutionary forces that promote colorfulness,” Cooney says.

Another open question is whether songbirds are just one example of how life is more colorful in the tropics. “[Early naturalists] were talking about not just birds but other things like plants and insects and fish,” Cooney says. “It remains to be seen whether this is a general phenomenon that applies to all types of organisms, but I would suspect that it does.”

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Not every owl is a night owl. Of the 200-plus owl species that fly the world today, the vast majority are nocturnal or crepuscular and hunt at dusk, night, or dawn. But a select few are diurnal or cathemeral, meaning they’re most active in the daytime, or really, anytime. 

This can be determined by a species’ habitat, as well as their diet. For example, snowy owls spend their summers in the Arctic, when the sun stays up for 12 to 24 hours a day. They also mainly eat lemmings, chunky rodents that are easier to catch on the tundra while it’s light out. 

[Related: Transform your yard into an owl kingdom]

But what would cause these finely tuned hunters to switch their schedules? A study published today in the journal PNAS traces an “evolutionary reversal” in one of the largest living groups of owls and presents “the first fossil evidence for diurnal behavior” among the birds, according to the abstract.

The research focuses on a well-preserved skeleton from northern China’s Ma Liushu Formation. Measuring about 12 inches from head to toe, Miosurnia diurna is estimated to be 6 to 10 million years old and is related to modern diurnal species such as burrowing owls and Northern hawk owls.

Paleontologists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences analyzed the size and shape of the extinct bird’s eye, cranial, and lower leg bones and compared them to measurements from modern relatives. The authors found that the morphological features of the fossil jibed closely with day-hunting species from the group Surniini, which includes several North American owls, including the short-eared owl and ferruginous pygmy-owl. 

They also dissected an undigested food pellet in the specimen’s stomach and discovered small mammal bones like the ones extracted from kestrels (a miniature falcon that hunts by day) from the same time period. The two birds might have coexisted in dry, high savannah along the Tibetan Plateau, but “likely used different foraging strategies,” the researchers write in the paper.

In contrast with other ancient owls, whose senses of sight, sound, and even smell were suited to the darkness, Miosurnia diurna seemed to be better adapted for daytime, with large eyes and less-tubular ears that match the traits in grassland owls today. As such, the extinct owl’s environment might have been the main driver behind its behavioral shift: The study goes so far to attribute the night-to-day switch to “steppe habitat expansion and climate cooling in the late Miocene.”

[Related: An ancient era of global warming could hint at our scorching future]

For Jonathan Slaght, a biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, the details of Miosurnia diurna’s surroundings are almost as interesting as its evolutionary history. “It’s neat that the research shows that there were probably owls in savannahs,” he says (the paleontological record on grassland birds is still relatively patchy). But he also sees similarities between the ancient species and the bird he studies in Siberia, the Blakiston’s fish-owl. Both are part of the diverse Strigidae family, and are outliers in a way. “I feel some kinship,” Slaght says. “By modern standards this is a weird owl, and Blakiston’s fall into that category.” Though fish-owls are crepuscular, they lack key nocturnal features like wide facial discs and silent flight. This might be because they hunt in rivers, not woods, and have a different set of strategies for hooking prey.

Miosurnia diurna’s bones tease its specialized hunting skills—but its DNA could reveal far more. In their paper, the paleontologists mention that the genetic underpinnings of diurnal adaptations “would be a fruitful area of research” for others to explore. But it all points to a much larger question: What made owls become owls? Slaght, for one, isn’t making any assumptions: “I like to see owls being unexpected,” he says. Maybe, that’s what defines them in part, too.

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In Atka Bay in Antarctica, hundreds of Emperor penguins pack together in a huddle on the vast gleaming sheet of frozen ocean. While they keep warm in the frigid icescape, a yellow cart-like robot slowly and quietly approaches the colony of regal birds. A four-wheeled bot isn’t something a penguin would typically encounter in the barren environment. But measuring only 3 feet long and about eye level with the adult penguins, the robotic vehicle doesn’t seem to startle them—even as it drives just a few feet away. 

The penguin-friendly bot is named ECHO, an autonomous, remote-controlled ground vehicle created by the Marine Animal Remote Sensing Lab at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. ECHO is part of a larger international, multidisciplinary research effort called MARE, which monitors the impact of human-induced change on the Southern Ocean.

“We all know that the world is changing, and that change will have dramatic effects on biodiversity and on ecosystems, especially in very remote areas, like Antarctica,” says Daniel P. Zitterbart, principal investigator of the Marine Animal Remote Sensing Lab. Some experts have predicted that Emperor penguins could be nearing extinction within about 100 years, he says. “To understand if that’s true or not, we need to start monitoring those systems very closely now.”

Over 30 years, MARE will assess the vulnerability of Antarctic ecosystems by following population dynamics of Emperor penguins. These birds are an iconic animal of Antarctica, but “​​in contrast to what people think, the Emperor penguin is a species very poorly studied,” says Céline Le Bohec, a researcher at the Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien and the Centre Scientifique de Monaco, who is a research partner and ecologist on MARE. “So any data, especially from the sea, is exciting and precious.” 

The team is using the Emperor penguin as a sentinel species of the Southern Ocean, because it is an important top predator in the food chain. In the Southern Ocean, there are fewer layers, or trophic levels, in the food web than other parts of the world—so any change to species at the bottom of the food chain will have major impacts to those at the top. Studying how an upper-level predator like the Emperor penguin is coping with climate change can tell scientists about the health of the entire Southern Ocean ecosystem, explains Le Bohec.

[Related: Most male Emperor penguins fast for 115 days—but a few of them may sneak snacks]

“Another advantage of top predators, like Emperor penguins, is that they are far-ranging species, which implies that the protection of their vast habitat would benefit many ecological structures and species,” she says. “Those umbrella species are also precious tools for conservation management policy.”

The MARE team is trying to gather information with minimum disturbance to the birds and the colony. But, currently, the researchers have to physically capture and tag the birds on their backs. The tags are a Passive Integrated Transponder (PIT) and Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) system—which works the same way as the microID chips in pet dogs. The only way to retrieve the data from those tags is by getting close enough to the birds to rescan the device, says Zitterbart. 

While the colony at Atka Bay is conveniently about five miles from the German Antarctic station, it’s still easy to miss the penguins out in the field, he says. Even if the researchers know the approximate time in the season penguins will be at the Atka Bay site, they might be out at sea foraging for days or weeks. Plus, the huge expanse and harsh, unpredictable weather conditions make the Southern Ocean a challenging environment for human exploration and study. 

That’s why Zitterbart’s team relies on remote sensing technologies that don’t require researchers to physically be in the field. While satellites can survey sea surface temperatures, wind, ice cover, and other physical parameters, they are not as good at monitoring food chains and species dynamics in ecosystems. Instead, the MARE researchers use camera systems, land antennas, and autonomous vehicles, like ECHO. 

Researchers can easily tell ECHO, which is both remote-controlled and autonomous, to drive in a specific path around the colony. The vehicle is equipped with several tools, including LIDAR and a 360-degree camera, which can detect penguins in the wide white terrain. The robot also has an antenna—a rectangular panel positioned like a bulldozer’s front bucket. The antenna sends out a pulse that activates the other antenna attached to the penguin’s tag, which identifies the animal. 

“As a human, you cannot walk around and try to scan 15,000 or 24,000 penguins each year, it’s impossible,” says Zitterbart. “The amount of data we can gather through ECHO is something we would never be able to achieve with any other method in this place.” 

While ECHO has only been trudging through the landscape for a year, so far it seems like the penguins aren’t afraid when it sidles up to the colony. In fact, past studies have also indicated that some animals might be less reactive to robots than humans, says Zitterbart.  

“The really cool thing is if I as a human would try to get as close as ECHO, they would be running away,” Zitterbart says. “We don’t want to scare the animals. Our general aim is to do more science with less impact. And humans have much bigger impact on the animals than the robot actually has.” 

The project is still in its early testing stages and the team is working on improvements, says Zitterbart. ECHO’s battery, for instance, only lasts about a day. There’s also not a great setup to protect ECHO from a sudden snowstorm. Eventually, the MARE team wants ECHO to park inside the Single Penguin Observation and Tracking, or SPOT, a small outpost with cameras and monitors that has been overlooking the Atka Bay colony for about 10 years. SPOT could serve as a kind of garage for ECHO to take shelter in and recharge, Zitterbart says.  

In its next phase, the roving robot will provide behavioral and biological information about the Emperor penguins that scientists haven’t been able to collect before, says Le Bohec. It opens up doors to understanding survival and breeding rates, collective activity like huddling for warmth, calls and communication, and hunting strategies at sea. ECHO will also download important GPS data of the birds while they are at sea, which can reveal habitat hotspots.  

Governing bodies in charge of conservation issues can learn from the Emperor penguins, whose behavior can help “define and map marine biological ‘hotspots’ and Marine Protected Areas,” Le Bohec says. She adds that all of ECHO’s data will “allow us to evaluate the overall trend and extinction risk of the species, modeling future population trajectories under the warming scenarios forecast for the next decades and century.”

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The following is an excerpt from The Secret Perfume of Birds: Uncovering the Science of Avian Scent by Danielle J. Whittaker. Copyright 2022. Published with permission by Johns Hopkins University Press.

“Birds don’t have a sense of smell, so I don’t understand why you’d study that anyway.”

This extraordinary statement, expressed offhandedly by neurobiologist Dr. Jim Goodson while we waited in a cafeteria line at lunchtime, caught me off guard. Every form of life, even plants and bacteria, has the ability to sense chemical compounds in their environments. Chemical senses, which include smell and taste, are critical for avoiding harmful substances, like poisons, and finding beneficial ones, like food. Yet here was a well-respected biologist telling me that an entire class of animals, encompassing nearly twenty thousand species, lacked what is often called “the most ancient and fundamental sense.” That couldn’t be right, could it?

I was a postdoctoral researcher in the Biology department at Indiana University, and that afternoon, I was casually chatting with Goodson about the difficulties I was having in the lab. I was studying dark-eyed juncos, gray and white sparrows that are common throughout North America. I was interested in why they choose a specific individual to mate with, and why sometimes they are loyal to their mates but other times they cheat. I was specifically attempting to explore the role of a family of immune-related genes called the major histocompatibility complex, or MHC for short. MHC genes had been the subject of much debate in the previous decade or so. Although the primary role of the products of these genes is to detect potentially harmful invaders, such as bacteria and parasites, researchers thought that MHC might be the basis for sexual attraction in many animals, and maybe even in humans. Excited by the possibility of resolving the mysteries of mate choice, I dove headfirst into the project. In 2008, MHC genes had not been studied much in birds, but in general, animals were thought to detect MHC by smell. The dubious Dr. Goodson was intimating that since birds couldn’t detect scent, MHC was probably inconsequential in their mate choice decisions, and therefore wasn’t worth studying.

Although I had a decent education in evolutionary biology, my PhD research was in primatology, and I was still new to ornithology. I was constantly surprised by all the ways that birds were different from mammals. For example, most female mammals have two functioning ovaries, one on the left side and one on the right side of the body. But in birds, only the left ovary develops, which reduces overall body weight. Compared to mammals, birds have more efficient circulatory and respiratory systems, helping them to direct more of their energy to flying. In fact, most of the differences I knew about were adaptations to flight. These changes made intuitive sense to me, and they were clear examples of how evolution works: a trait that increases an animal’s ability to survive and reproduce becomes more common because those survivors pass it on to more descendants. Similarly, traits that decrease an animal’s success are less likely to be passed on because animals with those traits don’t survive as long or have as many offspring. Yet losing an entire sense didn’t seem to me like it would improve anyone’s survival! Surely, not being able to smell would be a big disadvantage, since smell is important for sensing the environment around you.

Because my ornithology textbooks were quiet on the topic of bird olfaction, I started scouring the literature looking for evidence to support Goodson’s seemingly counterintuitive claim. Soon, I found that beliefs about anosmic birds—that is, birds without a sense of smell (from the Greek osmē, “odor”)—had been around for decades, although they were rarely mentioned in scientific literature. Neurobiologists like Goodson noted that the olfactory bulb—the part of the brain that receives information from receptors in the nose—is unusually small in birds. However, not all birds display this trait: for example, it is widely accepted that turkey vultures are attracted to the scent of carrion. Also, the “tube-nosed” seabirds, so called because of the shape of their nostrils, have relatively large olfactory bulbs and can find food at sea using scent. Kiwi birds in New Zealand are nocturnal but have poor eyesight, so they use scent to detect insects and worms in the dark. While these anomalies were acknowledged in the books, they were presented as exceptions to the rule that birds had little to no sense of smell.

The conventional wisdom stated that birds gave up the ability to smell in exchange for superior eyesight. Indeed, most birds have exceptional eyesight, better than any mammal. Raptors have excellent visual acuity and can see over very long distances—eagles can detect the movements of small prey animals from a great height, and owls have evolved especially large eyes so they can see even in very dark conditions.

In addition to aiding in hunting, eyesight is important in mate choice. Some of the flashiest animals in the world are male birds— think of peacocks and birds of paradise. These birds sport ornate tails and crests showing off brightly colored feathers, primarily for the purpose of attracting females. While extravagant plumage is a commonly recognized feature of birds, less well-known is that birds can actually see more colors than mammals. Most birds have tetrachromatic vision, meaning that they can see four colors, using four different types of cone receptors in their retinas. Humans and most other primates are only trichromatic, with red, green, and blue receptors. Birds’ fourth type of cone receptor allows them to see colors in the ultraviolet wavelengths, which means that some feather colors that look dull to us are actually much more intriguing and attractive to a bird. Ultraviolet sensitivity also allows birds to see more clearly and navigate better in dense foliage, as individual leaves stand out more because they reflect ultraviolet light. These improved visual abilities have obvious advantages: predators with good eyesight will be more successful in obtaining food, and males with more flamboyant plumage will mate with more females and sire more offspring.

But why would evolving improved eyesight come at the cost of smell? What disadvantage would necessitate such a trade-off rather than simply enhancing one sense? The concept made no sense to me, and I couldn’t find any scientific explanations, only assertions. This widespread acceptance of an unsupported “fact” rankled me. Suddenly, I knew I had a new adventure to pursue, one that changed the course of my research and my life.

Buy The Secret Perfume of Birds: Uncovering the Science of Avian Scent here.

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What do birds get up to at night? It was a simple question that puzzled scientists for hundreds of years. There were wild theories that birds went underwater, or immersed themselves in mud. In the 19th century, a German stork was found with an African spear through its neck, providing evidence that birds in fact migrated. And in 1881, one scientist observed these migrating birds flying at night while pointing a telescope up at the moon.  

Moon-watching for birds remained much of a niche science. It works like the transit method in astronomy, in which exoplanets are measured when their silhouettes pass in front of a star. Ornithologist George Lowery started quantifying this in the 1950s, organizing massive campaigns to collect nationwide data from these lunar observations. Between twilight and dawn, Lowery’s crew would look up at the full moon and mark the pathways and flight directions and number of birds they saw. Because technology was relatively crude at the time, they correlated the moon face with a circular clock face and marked the “time” (referring to location) that the bird entered and exited at. 

“What we’re trying to do is automate that with our little robot,” says Wesley Honeycutt, a research associate at the University of Oklahoma. “Because while Lowery’s technique is useful, it’s painful. I have stared at the moon so much in the past few years.”

[Related: While you sleep, scientists will use a space telescope to spy on migrating birds]

Honeycutt is referring to LunAero, which he and his team at University of Oklahoma created. The hardware components of LunAero involve a camera to record video, a small computer, a spotting scope, and a motorized mount. It uses simple computer vision techniques to keep the moon in focus and move along with it. It can pick up on birds that the passive observer might miss. The mount can accommodate a wide variety of telescopes, if birders or ornithologists wanted to bring their own. 

In addition to video recordings, the system also generates a log file with information on recording time, the frame counts, and the camera sensor settings. The team is working on developing software that can analyze the videos obtained from LunAero. But for now, after video is collected, humans have to manually extract the frames that contain birds and annotate their flight paths and patterns (such as whether they fly slow or fast). The initial tests were run in April and May 2018 and 2019, a peak time in bird migration. 

The researchers have already been able to glean a great deal of information from the data they have so far. “It depends on conditions and how high the birds are. There are certainly some birds that you can identify [their] genus, maybe [their] species if you make some assumptions about where you are and what birds you’re likely to see,” says Eli Bridge, an ornithologist and assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma. “There are some birds with really characteristic flight patterns that you can pick out—we can see nighthawks swoop up and down. In addition to just counting them, you can get really accurate flight directions for them. You can visualize wind drift.” 

The goal for the team is to use this technique as an accompaniment to other bird migration tracking tools such as radar aeroecology.

“Radar aeroecology is cool because you can see the migrants and how they fly out from a city or a roost and how they flow and the height, but you can’t tell what you’re looking at,” Honeycutt says. “You can see that there is a water-balloon [shaped mass of something] in that general area of the sky, but you can’t tell what kind of bird, if it’s 12 birds, three insects in a trench coat—we don’t really know until we have a way to look at it.” 

Anyone can build the LunAero unit with materials found around a workshop and motors off Amazon. The pattern for parts and the assembly instructions are available to the public. The cost for the LunAero components without a telescope is about $150. The most expensive component is the Raspberry Pi computer that powers the system. “One of the advantages of having these really cheap instruments is that you can deploy a lot of them all at once,” Honeycutt says. “And if you have all of these crummy sensors deployed next to each other, you eventually will hit a critical mass of sensors where you’re starting to produce data that are on par with high quality instrumentation.” 

[Related: Inside the simple counting software that makes biologists’ jobs a little easier]

After they published the LunAero tech in a 2020 paper in the journal HardwareX, Bridge and Honeycutt have continued to make hardware upgrades, and have sent the devices out for birders to try. 

“Ideally it would be a citizen science tool. I don’t know if we’re there yet. There’s been a few niggling things that have made it difficult,” Bridge says. If there are poor weather conditions or a cloud covers the moon, then they have to reconfigure the device throughout the night. The observations are tied to the lunar cycle, and data LunAero can collect plummets when the moon is less than half full. 

“There’s been the constant little tweaks, the incremental improvements of how do you hold the camera stable on a lot of different scopes,” Honeycutt notes. “And while it’s not a big jump in concept in the hardware, it’s the little things that are growing the potential user base.” 

The group is working up to one of their first data papers soon on social behavior that can be captured and quantified by LunAero. “You can tell whether birds are flying by themselves or in a cluster or sometimes a formation, sometimes just a loose group,” Bridge says. “I don’t think there’s any other way to see that at night unless you’ve got a spotlight or an infrared camera, or some other way of directly observing the birds.” 

[Related: Birders behold: Cornell’s Merlin app is now a one-stop shop for bird identification]

Data analysis is the big barrier to putting a widespread data paper out there. “It takes a bit longer to analyze the data than to collect it because you basically have to cycle through frame by frame,” Bridge says. “We don’t have the means to process lots of videos from lots of people right now.” 

And while it might seem like a tool such as machine learning could help out, unfortunately, that might not yet be possible. “If you look at the video, a lot of those birds are one pixel,” Honeycutt says. “Distinguishing one pixel that is an actual bird from 10,000 pixels of not-bird is a non-trivial problem that I don’t think machine learning techniques can handle yet. That’s why we’re doing more of a naive system which is more computationally intensive.” 

Right now, the group is working on proof-of-concept and early data papers for the instrument. But in five years, they imagine that it could become a unique add-on to the suite of existing migration technology. 

“If you have tracking devices on [birds], or if you’re seeing them by radar, you can’t directly observe the birds. Being able to directly observe the birds, even if it’s while they fly across the moon, is a unique set of data,” says Jeff Kelly, a professor of biology at University of Oklahoma. “There’s always going to be value in integrating those data with tracking data where you’re getting information about where and when the bird flew but you can’t see it directly.”

There are still many mysteries that remain when it comes to understanding why and how birds migrate. Do birds fly together, do they fly separately, are they responding to the same wind conditions, are they all flying at the same heights? “It’s hard for us to concretely understand what these birds are dealing with,” says Kelly. “When we start talking about infrastructure that we build in the air, or bird collisions with buildings and problems with lights at night, this kind of data where people can concretely observe what’s going on will have a big impact on their ability to grasp the problem.”

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Bald and golden eagles across North America are in danger from lead poisoning, a new analysis suggests. 

Researchers tracked levels of the deadly metal in more than 1,000 eagles from 38 US states, and found that “unexpectedly high” proportions of birds from the two species suffered from both chronic and recent poisoning. Almost half of the eagles the team inspected showed signs of repeated lead exposure in their bones, raising concerns about the impacts on bald and golden eagle populations around the continent. The findings can inform future eagle conservation efforts, the researchers reported on February 17 in Science.

“For quite some time we have known that lead poisoning was affecting these species, especially as we have seen case numbers increase in rehabilitation settings,” Megan Judkins, the aviary director at the Grey Snow Eagle House, an eagle rehabilitation facility in Perkins, Oklahoma run and operated by the Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma, said in an email. “But research like this allows us to see this for what it is, more than just a localized problem.” 

She and her colleagues were not involved in the new study, but have also observed lead poisoning cases drastically increase within the last five to 10 years, said Judkins, who researches eagle genomics at Oklahoma State University. 

Although lead occurs naturally in Earth’s crust, it also gets into the environment through human activities such as mining. Eagles are frequently exposed to the metal through lead bullets, which can fragment into hundreds of pieces when they strike an animal, says Vincent Slabe, a coauthor of the study and research wildlife biologist based in Montana who works for the nonprofit Conservation Science Global Inc. Once ingested, lead damages the birds’ nervous systems and organs and can lead to seizures, extreme weakness, and death. Even if a bird survives, it may experience lifelong vision, cardiovascular, and other health problems, Judkins said.

[Related: Everything you think you know about bald eagles is wrong]

To find out how wide ranging the issue is, the team reached out to scientists studying live eagles, state and federal agencies that respond to reports of dead eagles, and wildlife rehabilitation facilities that treat sick and injured birds. Between 2010 and 2018, the researchers examined 1,210 eagles, including 620 live birds. 

The researchers sampled a variety of tissues, including blood, bones, liver, and feathers. While lead can linger in the blood or liver for weeks to months, it accumulates in bone throughout an animal’s lifetime.

“Basically all of these data are telling us the same story: These eagles are very frequently exposed to lead, more than we had previously understood, and this exposure is happening repeatedly over the course of their lives,” says Todd E. Katzner, a research wildlife biologist at the US Geological Survey Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center in Boise, Idaho and another study author.

He and his team measured lead levels in the birds’ bones indicative of chronic poisoning in 46 and 47 percent of the deceased golden and bald eagles, respectively. The other tissues carried evidence of short-term lead exposures in 27 to 33 percent of bald eagles and 7 to 35 percent of golden eagles. Adult birds of both species carried higher bone lead concentrations than younger birds. 

The researchers also detected higher rates of chronic lead poisoning in bald eagles from central states than those closer to the coasts, although the reasons for this pattern aren’t yet clear, Slabe says.

Generally, lead concentrations in the blood and livers of both species rose during the winter months, when the eagles typically rely on scavenging to sustain themselves. The birds often feast upon gut piles left behind by hunters and can ingest fragments of lead ammunition along with the nutritious meat. 

“The eagles are being poisoned during the time of year when these carcasses are abundant on the landscape,” Slabe says. “This realization has been concluded from multiple regional studies, and now concluded as a source of lead exposure in these birds at the continental scale in our study.”

He and his colleagues found that 4.9 percent of dead golden eagles and 25.8 percent of dead bald eagles had lead concentrations in their livers high enough to indicate severe poisoning. Based on these numbers, the team calculated that deadly lead poisoning may be reducing annual population growth rates by 3.8 percent in bald eagles and 0.8 percent in golden eagles. That’s especially worrying news for golden eagles, whose populations are holding steady or declining even as bald eagles grow in number.

“Over a 20-year period…the population will be smaller by many thousands of individuals than it would be otherwise,” Katzner says. 

Lead may also threaten eagle populations in ways that the researchers didn’t account for, he adds. Even when lead poisoning isn’t fatal, it may weaken birds enough to prevent them from laying eggs and raising chicks.

The team is now investigating whether fewer eagles die after hunters switch to using non-lead ammunition.

“​​The more animals they harvest with non-lead ammo, the more non-leaded food there is for eagles on the landscape,” Slabe says. “As we switch more of this food source to a clean meal and a healthy meal for an eagle, then we could start to see this pattern changing [to] a reduction in mortality in bald and golden eagles from lead poisoning at a nationwide scale.” 

The new report provides important information for both management decisions and public outreach, Judkins said.

“Fortunately, by utilizing non-lead ammunitions, we can easily eliminate the chance for these individuals to ingest lead,” she said. “By being able to include a strong, peer-reviewed paper such as this into our educational tools, it makes our statement that much stronger.”

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What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: The first international vaccine campaign in history used young orphans as human refrigerators 

By Rachel Feltman

There are stories you expect to be uncontroversially positive and stories you expect to be irredeemably negative. The Balmis Expedition defies such binary categorization. On the one hand, it’s the tale of the first international effort to get vaccines into arms all over the world—an instance of a monarch choosing to put resources toward improving public health and eradicating a horrific disease. On the other hand, it involves young orphans—toddlers, in some cases—being crowded onto ships and sent around the world to serve as human incubators. But even those two polarities risk oversimplifying this moment in history.

By the 1700s, smallpox was a horrific fact of life, killing an estimated 400,000 people throughout Europe each year. But things were even worse in the Americas, which had been exposed to smallpox by Spanish invaders starting in the 1500s. It’s thought to have contributed to the downfall of the Incas and Aztecs, as the disease was almost always fatal to indigenous populations. 

King Charles IV of Spain had lost several family members to smallpox and seen several of the survivors scarred significantly by virolation, which as I talked about on a past episode of Weirdest Thing, was the practice of purposefully infecting people with smallpox scabs or pus that had been weakened with steam or some other method. Because virolation actually infected you with smallpox, albeit often a weaker case than you’d catch naturally, you still got sick and had pus-filled lesions. 

That changed in the 1790s, when Edward Jenner tested pus from cowpox blisters as a less dangerous form of inoculation, thereby inventing vaccines as we know them. He tested it in 1796 on his gardener’s son, which is a bit of a foreshadowing. 

In 1803, King Charles announced his intention to provide free vaccination to the masses in the Spanish colonies—and to leave each region with the resources and knowledge necessary to continue their own vaccination programs in the future. Royal physician Francisco Javier de Balmis, who had spent time in Mexico researching botany and folk medicine, led the charge. 

The hitch: Pus could stay usable on a piece of cloth or pressed between glass and sealed with wax for a journey of a few days, but what then? Some suggested bringing cows on board and slowly giving them cowpox one by one. But cows are loud, messy, and large—so Balmis went with 22 Spanish orphans between the age of 3 and 9 instead. Two boys would be infected with cowpox, and just before their pustules healed over, their pus would be used to inoculate another pair, and so on. The group made it to the Americas just in time to use one final remaining pustule—and to replenish their chain of children by renting some from local families. 

By the time the expedition finished, some 300,000 people in the Canaries, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, the Philippines and China had received the vaccine for free. 

FACT: Legends are strange things. But the legend of the poop knife is especially so.

By Sara Kiley Watson

Wade Davis, a Canadian anthropologist sometimes called the “real-life Indiana Jones,” is passionate about telling stories about the Inuit and their relationship with their icy homeland. But one of his stories is especially iconic. He wrote of a mysterious Inuit tale in one of his books, called Shadows in the Sun, back in 1998. This tale of survival goes as such, and I quote:w

“There is a well known account of an old Inuit man who refused to move into a settlement. Over the objections of his family, he made plans to stay on the ice. To stop him, they took away all of his tools. So in the midst of a winter gale, he stepped out of their igloo, defecated, and honed the feces into a frozen blade, which he sharpened with a spray of saliva. With the knife he killed a dog. Using its rib cage as a sled and its hide to harness another dog, he disappeared into the darkness.”

On its own, the story is bizarre enough, but in the past few years it’s taken on a new, more scientific life. Enter a group of scientists who said “hmmm let’s actually test this whole poop knife theory.” So they did—and really, really committed. The Kent State researchers created their own replica of the Inuit diet to create authentic poop, then molded said poop into knife shapes to see if Davis’s story would hold up in real life.

Using the poop knives that were frozen at brutally cold temperatures, they attempted to slice and dice a pig hide—but the knives left melty skid marks instead of serious dashes, meaning murdering a dog with ice cold poop is likely more myth than miracle.

And if testing the legend wasn’t enough, it spurred a discussion of whether or not we should take these kinds of tales at their face value. But whatever way you spin it, making a knife out of your own feces is definitely a tale to be told, even if the resulting weapon is pretty crappy.

But what about the boys? While historical records do suggest that Balmis intended for them to have wonderful lives in Mexico City—better lives than they could have had in Spain—but what information we have about them suggests that didn’t pan out. Listen to this week’s episode to learn more. 

FACT: Bird tongues are way stranger than you think

By Lauren Young

There’s a lot of reasons why I am enamored with birds—I’ve waxed poetic about their stunning plumage and unique vision, silly mating dances, and food hoarding tendencies. So, the story for my Weirdest Thing debut fittingly ties around a peculiar, perhaps overlooked, feature of our avian friends: Their tongues. 

Birders and scientists can glean a lot from the tongue of a bird, from feeding tactics to the anatomy of ancient extinct birds. Tongues can be so distinct that they can help identify different species, if you so happen to catch a lucky peek. Bird tongues come in a diversity of shapes, sizes, and structures, which each supply birds with an array of fascinating (and weird) behaviors. Some tongues are short and thick, some are frayed and barbed, some are pronged at the tip, while others are long and narrow—like certain woodpecker species. 

Woodpeckers are well-known high-speed drillers, but many species have a remarkably long tongue within that chisel-like beak. These rope-like, fleshy extensions can grow to a third the length of its body, while others even have tongues that reach up to 5 inches past the tip of the bill.  

You might be wondering, like I was, where does all that tongue… go? It turns out that woodpeckers tuck their tongues all nice and snug around the top of their skulls, and poke it through the nasal cavities.

If you think this floppy, long tongue would be cumbersome, think again: its length serves a number of functional advantages. In some species, like the Northern Flicker woodpecker, a sticky mucus coats around the tongue to help collect grub, like ants down in an anthill. Other woodpecker species use their tongues to get to hard-to-reach prey in their freshly burrowed trees. 

Additionally, the long tongue is actually one way a woodpecker doesn’t get bad whiplash. By wrapping around the skull, the tongue actually acts a bit like a cushion for the brain and helps support the woodpecker as it pecks into trees, as writer Rebecca Heisman explains for the American Bird Conservancy. (Read the full paper published in PLOS ONE.) Listen to this week’s episode to hear more about how the woodpecker keeps on being its best headbanger self.

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Season 5 of The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week was recorded using the Shure MV7 podcast kit. The kit includes a Manfrotto PIXI mini tripod, so everything you need to get recording straight away is included—that’s super-helpful if you’re a creator who’s buying their first mic set up. Check it out at www.shure.com/popsci.

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Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, and you might be brainstorming what to get your loved one. But if you find yourself browsing the aisles for a last-minute gift, please skip the shiny plastic balloons. 

Balloons are often made of rubber, latex, or nylon which either biodegrade very slowly or not at all. Balloons can wreak havoc on ecosystems and your local electrical grid if not disposed of correctly by puncturing them and putting them in the garbage. Balloons can be ingested by wildlife and those shiny, metallic mylar balloons can float into power lines causing outages and fires.

Because of these effects, environmentalists have long asked groups like  Indianapolis 500 to end traditions of intentionally releasing thousands of balloons before races. In November, the Cleveland, Ohio city council recently banned intentional releases of 10 or more balloons, and violators are subject to a $150 fine.

Marine wildlife, like albatrosses and petrels, can mistake balloons for food, leading to lack of nutrition, internal injury, starvation, and even death, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Marine Debris Program. Balloon strings can be just as hazardous, sometimes leading to suffocation if an unfortunate creature is wrapped up in one.  

A 2019 study in the journal Scientific Reports found that balloons were the most dangerous form of marine debris for seabirds who often mistake them for squid. The researchers autopsied 1733 seabirds across Australia and New Zealand and found that 18.5 percent of them died from consuming balloons or balloon fragments. Additionally, the researchers found that consuming a balloon or balloon fragment is 32 times deadlier than ingesting a hard plastic fragment.  

[Related: Host a sustainable affair with these environmentally-friendly tips.]

But balloons can be a dangerous headache for humans too. Mylar balloons, prized for their shiny metallic coating, can cause outages and fires if they float into power lines. In April, nearly 6000 residents of Santa Cruz, California lost power for about an hour due to a Mylar balloon colliding with a power line.

“We see several hundred incidents a year,” Paul Toscarelli, the senior director of electric transmission and distribution operations at Public Service Electric and Gas Company (PSE&G), New Jersey’s largest utility company, tells Popular Science.  “Probably about 30,000 customers on average a year [in New Jersey] experience some sort of interruption because of a Mylar balloon contact.” 

If power lines come in contact with the metallic coating, or any type of metal, it can cause the circuit to short and the power to go out for hours at a time. The damage can vary if it’s just one balloon or a whole bouquet, sometimes resulting in melted wires or fires. It’s the same phenomenon as sticking a metal fork into a power socket or toaster, Toscarelli says. The metal coating is less porous than a latex balloon—meaning the floating threat bounces throughout the air for up to days at a time.

“The coating on it is very resilient, so it tends to hold the helium gas much longer and stay inflated much longer,” Toscarelli says, which means they are more likely to run into a power line and cause damage.  

If you absolutely must buy Mylar balloons, Toscarelli advises practicing “responsible balloon ownership.” Do not intentionally release them, weigh/tie them down, and puncture them several times before disposing of them in the trash. 

But to avoid causing a power outage in your neighborhood or hurting an albatross, maybe just stick to the chocolates and flowers this Valentine’s Day.

The post Do something sweet for Earth—ditch balloons this Valentine’s Day appeared first on Popular Science.

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After the E.coli outbreak in spinach in 2006, farms in California’s Salinas Valley had to take action to address food safety. The wave of concern around wildlife contaminating produce resulted in 13 percent of wetlands and river-side habitats being razed over the next few years. And it wasn’t a one-time event: In response to food-borne diseases, habitats are often removed to prevent animals from coming in contact with crops. But according to a team of entomologists and environmental scientists from across the US, the safety of our fruits and veggies doesn’t need to come at the cost of biodiversity. 

Building on previous research, a study published recently in Ecological Applications illustrates the scale of risk associated with birds and pathogens in produce. It also proposes how some farms can deter harmful wildlife interactions—and welcome beneficial ones.

The researchers traced a path to find out how likely it is that birds carry bacteria, which species are most likely to do so, and how frequently they’re able to transmit people-sickening diseases.

In a meta-analysis of the existing data on birds and pathogens, Olivia Smith, a postdoctoral researcher at Michigan State University, found that nearly all past studies were conducted on the West Coast of the US where a majority of domestic produce is grown. In addition, they tended to focus on smaller organic farms that were varied in their production. Like Smith’s previous research, the studies focused on three bacteria that commonly cause food poisoning: E.coli, salmonella, and campylobacter. 

[Related: Compost can help protect us from food poisoning]

To properly establish risk, the authors first looked at whether the birds were actually carrying these contaminants. In their aggregated data from 1,565 studies, they found only 0.22 percent of birds carried E. coli and 0.46 carried salmonella. Conversely, around 8 percent carried campylobacter, which also happens to be the only example of an outbreak that has conclusively been traced to wild birds: a flock of migratory cranes in pea fields in Alaska.

To follow these pathogens back to the responsible bird species, Smith used a previous set of results where researchers collected 1,215 fecal samples from farms across Washington, Oregon, and California and identified them through DNA testing. Out of the 106 species present, nearly 40 percent of all the fecal matter was traced back to 35 kinds of birds. White-crowned, song, and house sparrows were three of the most frequent suspects when it came to the discovered poop deposits. 

Working with Smith’s previous studies and lab data collected by Daniel Karp, an assistant professor in the department of wildlife, fishing, and conservation biology at UC Davis and an author of the paper, the team also used data from 87 farms to see if the birds carrying the pathogens were visiting and interacting with the fruits and vegetables and transferring their bacteria. They then compiled survey data by observing the number of birds in and around the fields and whether they were touching the crops in some way.

For the most part, the total number of contacts observed per species positively correlated to the number of feces that could be traced back to that bird. But while the survey helped identify which feathered visitors were actively shedding their pathogens onto the crops, there were some cases where the abundance of a particular species didn’t match the frequency of its poops. With barn swallows, for example, the correlation was inverted.

“A swallow is flying above the farm field a lot and is dipping down and sometimes interacting with the produce, but it’s not really landing at all,” Karp explains. “We would say that it interacts with the produce a lot, because we see it there a lot. But those birds don’t really poop on the wing much.”

This means that though they are spotted often, the swallows are probably contaminating the crop much less than they are around it. At the same time, they’re eating pests that are harmful to the crops along the way. In comparison, the three types of sparrows were both present in the field and defecating a lot. 

“For the sparrow, this is a bird that even given its relatively high abundance in these fields, it poops even more often,” says Karp. 

The authors also concluded that the amount of pathogen that a bird species can carry could be determined by the risk of exposure. Species like Canada geese and brown-headed cowbirds that tend to dwell on the ground and around feedlots for livestock are more likely to come into contact with feces that carry E. coli and other bacteria. They might then pick up the those microbes and transport them to produce farms as they move and forage throughout the day.

Meanwhile, insect-eating birds like the yellow warbler that prefer being higher up in the canopies tend to have lower exposure. Smith has found that these species are less likely to carry disease because their natural habitats are relatively cleaner than the ground down below. This could be compounded by the fact that insects aren’t relatively as dirty as the grain that cattle and poultry are contaminating on ground.

Identifying key traits in bird species that serve as vectors for these harmful pathogens makes it easier to utilize safer food-handling techniques without affecting biodiversity and sustainability efforts.

“The exposure trait about livestock tells us something about how these birds are getting the pathogens, but also the kinds of birds that you would expect to be worried about,” says Karp. On the flip side, the diet indicator could suggest that certain avian species are actually beneficial for plants and farms. 

For Karp, this information is useful in creating more targeted schemes to evaluate which birds are harmful and whether their presence should be managed on specific farms. Deterrents such as screamers, sound cannons, or even falconry could be used to shoo away pathogen-carrying species. 

“This kind of targeted management gets us toward a more win-win situation, where we’re sort of benefiting conservation, and then getting some of those pests benefits, but then not worrying too much about the food safety risks,” Karp says. 

[Related: How to clean your bird feeders and baths for salmonella]

Sadhana Ravishankar, professor of food safety at the University of Arizona, stresses that while understanding who the predominant carriers of disease are, being able to deter them is another story. “Farmers can probably take precautionary measures, but nature is so vast. How effective can these controls be?” she says.

Other than scale, a lack of established controls is another food safety issue. “A lot of research needs to be done before you can come up with scientifically sound metrics,” Ravishankar says. Without these guidelines, farmers have an even tougher job of regulating what is or isn’t safe for consumption. 

Karp, however, plans to continue to refine his analysis by focusing on looking at how long a pathogen  lingers once it’s reached the crops. “Does it actually survive in the food?” he says. “Is it there for a couple of hours? Or is it there for weeks, in which case you’d be more worried about it when harvest time comes?”

From a bird lover’s perspective, his co-author Smith is interested in managing agricultural systems in a way that’s good both for people and biodiversity. She hopes to figure out which birds are risky so that US farms can be more sustainable and safe for a kid snacking on an apple and the swallows swooping through the sky.

The post These bird species are most likely to contaminate our fruits and veggies appeared first on Popular Science.

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Scientists have identified an extremely rare fossilized dinosaur embryo in an egg from southern China.

The late-Cretaceous specimen belongs to a group of dinosaurs called oviraptorosaurs, which are closely related to birds. Intriguingly, the embryo’s position resembles the “tucking” posture that modern birds assume before hatching. The findings indicate that this important adaptation evolved before birds split off from other dinosaurs, the researchers reported on December 21 in the journal iScience.

“Dinosaur embryos are key to the understanding of prehatching development and growth of dinosaurs,” Fion Waisum Ma, a PhD student in paleobiology at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom and coauthor of the findings, said in an email. While fossilized dinosaur eggs are abundant, however, embryos are much harder to come by. The dinosaur embryos that paleontologists have found are usually incomplete, with bones that have separated and become jumbled. 

By contrast, the newly described fossil includes an almost complete skeleton with bones arranged much as they were in life. “This little dinosaur is beautifully preserved in a fossilized egg,” Ma said. “We suspect the egg was buried by sand or mud quickly enough that it was not destroyed by processes like scavenging and erosion.”

She and her colleagues were able to reveal more than half the skeleton, with the rest still covered by rocky material in the egg. The fossil, originally discovered in an industrial park in China’s Jiangxi Province, dates to roughly 71 million to 65 million years ago. The elongated egg is 16.7 centimeters (6.6 inches) long and 7.6 centimeters (3 inches) wide, while the skeleton curled inside has a total length of 23.5 centimeters (9.3 inches).

[Related: A newfound South American dinosaur had a tail like a war club]

Oviraptorosaurs have been found in present-day North America and Asia. This dinosaur family is known for its diverse variety of skull shapes, including some with very tall crests. Had the embryo hatched, it probably would have grown into a medium-sized oviraptorosaur, Ma said, perhaps reaching 2 to 3 meters (6.6 to 9.8 feet) in length. The dinosaur would have been covered in feathers and had a toothless skull. 

The researchers compared the embryo’s anatomy with that of other oviraptorosaurs and theropods, the broader category of carnivorous dinosaurs that also includes Tyrannosaurus rex. The researchers also examined a fine slice of eggshell under the microscope and analyzed the evolutionary relationships among oviraptorosaurs to determine where the new embryo fell on the family tree. They concluded that the embryo belonged to a subgroup of oviraptorosaurs called Oviraptoridae. 

“The most surprising observation is the posture of this specimen—its body is curled with the back facing the blunt end of the egg, [and] the head below the body with the feet on each side,” Ma said. “This posture has never been recognized in a dinosaur embryo, but it is similar to a close-to-hatching modern bird embryo.”

To prepare for hatching, bird embryos reposition themselves in a process known as tucking. The oviraptorid fossil Ma and her team examined is arranged much like a 17-day-old chicken embryo in the first, or pre-tucking, phase. Over the next three days, a chicken embryo would gradually move into the final tucking posture, in which the body is curled with the head under the right wing. This posture seems to stabilize and direct the head while the bird cracks the eggshell with its beak, Ma said.    

She and her colleagues suspect that several previously discovered oviraptorid embryos are also arranged in various phases of tucking, although it’s hard to be certain because those specimens aren’t as well-preserved. Still, the team concluded that oviraptorids and modern birds may have used a similar strategy to maximize their chances of hatching successfully, unlike their more distant cousins such as the long-necked sauropods and living crocodilians.

[Related: Whoa, dinosaur eggs looked more dope than we thought]

“Tucking behaviour was usually considered unique to birds, but our new findings suggest that this behaviour could have existed and first evolved among theropod dinosaurs—the ancestors of modern birds,” Ma said.

To confirm this possibility, however, researchers will have to unearth more fossilized embryos of theropods and other kinds of dinosaurs to compare with modern birds and crocodiles. Ma and her colleagues also plan to investigate the skull and other body parts of this embryo still hidden within the rock.

“We hope to answer more questions about dinosaur early development and growth with this exceptional specimen,” she said.

The post This fossilized dinosaur embryo is curled up just like a baby bird appeared first on Popular Science.

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Around 120 million years ago in what is now northeastern China, there lived a bird that may have possessed the unusual ability to stick its tongue out. 

Scientists described a nearly complete skeleton of the ancient bird, which they named Brevirostruavis macrohyoideus, on December 1 in the Journal of Anatomy. The fossil’s extremely elongated tongue attachment bones, or hyoid apparatus, suggests that the bird could protrude its tongue from its mouth, much as some present-day birds do to grab hard-to-reach morsels.

Brevirostruavis highlights how both modern birds and their extinct relatives have developed a plethora of ways to secure a meal, says Robert Kambic, an assistant professor of biology at Hood College in Frederick, Maryland, who was not involved with the research.

“Birds were evolutionarily experimenting with a bunch of different types of feeding adaptations and strategies early on,” he says. “That’s just a cool thing, that this diversity of habits and feeding modes is not unique to living birds, but in fact seems to be representative of the whole bird line.”

In humans, the U-shaped hyoid sits at the base of the tongue, just above the voicebox. “That bone is not attached to any other bone, and it’s floating suspended by muscles that attach to it from a bunch of different directions,” Kambic says. “Some of the muscles of the tongue need this anchor point, especially if you think about sticking your tongue out and retracting it.”

Birds typically lack the muscular, agile tongues enjoyed by humans, although a few do have fleshy tongues that help them peel fruits or seeds with their beaks. And in a few families, parts of the hyoid apparatus and beak are elongated, allowing the birds to poke their tongues out. Hummingbirds use their nimble tongues to slurp up nectar from deep within flowers, while woodpeckers extend their tongues to pull insects or sap from trees. 

“Woodpeckers are the extreme,” Zhiheng Li, a paleontologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and coauthor of the findings, said in an email. “Their tongues are so long that they actually wrap around the top of their heads and even enter one of their nostrils.”

The newly-reported Brevirostruavis belongs to a diverse group of early birds called Enantiornithes, which have no living representatives but were the dominant birds around the world during the Cretaceous Period. The specimen was discovered preserved in a slab of rock from China’s Liaoning Province dating to the early Cretaceous. Brevirostruavis was about the size of a starling, and its long claws and the proportions of its toe bones hint that the creature was a tree-dweller.

When the researchers examined the Brevirostruavis fossil, they also identified an odd combination of features not seen in other living or extinct birds. 

In today’s birds, the hyoid apparatus consists of cartilage and several bones, including the rod-shaped ceratobranchials and epibranchials. Modern birds that can stick their tongues out have especially long epibranchial bones, as well as elongated beaks. Early birds didn’t have these bones; in Brevirostruavis, it’s the ceratobranchials that are curved and run nearly the length of its skull. 

More perplexingly, Brevirostruavis also had a short, pointed snout, which was lined with peg-shaped teeth. This unique pairing—a very long hyoid apparatus and short snout—could have several explanations, Kambic says. 

“Rather than trying to get the tongue as far out as it can, the long muscle attachment could also be good for a muscular tongue that’s really needed…to either maneuver food around within the mouth or close to the mouth,” he speculates.

Another possibility is that Brevirostruavis did indeed use its impressive hyoid to stick its tongue out, but some evolutionary constraint prevented the bird from elongating its beaklike snout. “So it has this long tongue without a commensurate beak to help it out,” Kambic says. “It has one part of the system, whereas a living bird might have two parts of the system that would work together.”

[Related: Were rocks on the menu for these ancient birds?]

Brevirostruavis may have been able to take advantage of food sources that other birds were unable to access, although the lack of preserved remains from the specimen’s last meal makes it difficult to be sure what it ate. Still, it’s possible that Brevirostruavis used its tongue to explore the bark of trees for hidden insects or to reach the nectar-like fluids and seeds in the reproductive cones of prehistoric plants, Li said. 

The team also analyzed the evolutionary relationships between Brevirostruavis and its relatives. They found that Brevirostruavis didn’t fit with any of the major groups of enantiornithines, indicating that the elongated hyoid apparatus evolved independently multiple times across the bird family tree. 

“Many of the same problems related to flying and eating today were present 120 million years ago, and that is why we see some of the same features evolved in such distant relatives of the birds around us today,” Li said.

Next, the team plans to examine several other fossil birds that also seem to have had fairly long tongues and to search for more Brevirostruavis specimens. “We also want to see if we can determine when the epibranchial bones evolved in birds, because those bones are pivotal for the long tongues present in living birds,” Li said.

Investigating how modern birds use their hyoid apparatuses might also shed light on why Brevirostruavis evolved its unusual combination of a short snout and long tongue bones, says Kambic, who studies how bones and muscle work together in living animals.

Nonetheless, he says, much can be learned from the skulls and tongue bones of bygone animals like Brevirostruavis. 

“[They] can potentially give us some nice specific insights in terms of what these animals were eating,” Kambic says. “And that gives us information about their day-to-day lives in a more direct way than some of the other bones of the rest of the body might be able to tell us.”

The post This 120-million-year-old bird could stick out its tongue appeared first on Popular Science.

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The biggest known eagle in history just got a bit more metal, thanks to new research. Modern species eat their food by ripping sections off into bite-sized pieces, but the extinct bird known as the Haast’s eagle or harpagornis ate more like a condor, sticking its whole head into the carcasses of larger creatures to eviscerate them from inside out. 

Biologists in Australia published their findings on the raptor with a 10-foot wingspan that swooped over New Zealand for the past many millennia in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences this week. They studied the morphology of the bird with virtual mockups to understand its behaviors, and used 3D-rendering tools to bring it back to life in a way. 

Previously, researchers couldn’t confirm whether harpagornis acted like a golden eagle, hunting and killing its prey, or more like a vulture, scavenging the meat and bones of already-dead creatures. To find out, the authors of the new study distilled potential traits of the ancient species from 3D images and compared them to features in today’s birds. 

The creature’s beak, braincase, and talons were studied using geometric morphometric and finite-element analyses, tools that allowed the team to determine the shape and strength of the bird’s features. They then calculated the amount of pressure that these body parts could bear to learn if the eagle was powerful enough to attack prey, or just strong enough to dig through the flesh of a carcass.

They found that the harpagornis’s beak and talons were more eagle-like in nature and able to withstand high amounts of pressure, leading them to believe that it was in fact a predator. But its skull shape, which had strain spots from eating, indicated that once it had taken down its meal, it would rip into it and eat the internal organs like a vulture. This combination of strategies also suggests that the species might have undergone rapid evolutionary changes to maximize its resources by being a hunter and a scavenger. 

The Haast’s eagle is known to have consumed another extinct Pacific bird, the moa, based on preserved bones scarred by talons. But this more recent discovery suggests the raptors were taking down the 400-something-pound beasts themselves, and then methodically tearing out the guts. Rock paintings from before harpagornis went extinct further hint that the species was bald, much like today’s vultures. 

When humans hunted moas to extinction about 800 years ago, the Haast’s eagle died out as well. Though it isn’t around to stick its head into massive carcasses anymore, studies like this give a glimpse of how ancient predators found creative ways to survive.

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Birds have mastered the art of landing on complex surfaces such as rough, textured tree branches. Now, a new robot developed by Stanford engineers has a useful set of bird-like features such as claws, toe pads, curving feet, and bending legs that allow it to land smoothly anywhere. 

The bot, a flying Frankenstein-type contraption, has four sets of propellers on top that fly it, and two legs underneath. The legs look similar to the legs on a bird you might see out the window, but are attached to a quadcopter.

The research, published in Science Robotics on Wednesday, details the development of the bot, which requires minimal computational power from its control board. This allows it to be incorporated in the future in other projects without demanding a lot of computational space, leaving room for other objectives like observation, recording, other movements, and more to be programmed in. The robotic bird-like legs can also be used to model the way avian legs move and function without needing to involve real birds. 

“We ended up designing this robot that can land like birds [do],” says David Lentink, a senior research engineer involved in the development, “and the way we got there was by first studying how birds actually accomplish landing on really complex surfaces.”

First, the team needed to create an initial prototype based on previous research in avian morphology. They consulted available texts and bird cadavers, and tried to get as much information as possible without having to use live birds. 

Lentink and the team went through many iterations of the robot legs in order to get the grasping effect onto surfaces like tree branches just right.They tested each iteration to see if it could land correctly by using another automated machine that would launch the bird bot at a tree the same way each time. If the legs could not grasp the surface, the robot would fall off the branch, and the team would readjust the features and try again until they got it right. 

[Related: LEO the robot can float like a butterfly and balance on a beam]

Early versions of the robot had legs that focused on shock absorption instead of mimicking avian characteristics, but as these versions failed to grasp the branch they were thrown at, the structures on the robot eventually evolved (through the researchers’ work) to become more bird-like. The team changed the design from one leg to two as trials showed that having both helped balance the robot on asymmetrical surfaces. They also swapped the flat rubber pads on the robot foot for a more wavy, rough-surfaced, but still squishy design (rubber proved too slippery to grasp the branches). They replaced engineered hooks with 3D-printed claw-like structures, as the hooks’ sharpness actually hindered performance. 

“There’s this whole mechanics of being able to grasp a complex surface of which you have no idea what it looks like,” says Lentink.

Besides features, the team had to get the actual motion of the leg just right. The final feet of the bird bot can bend at two joints, which enables it to grasp a branch by bending at the first joint before the second, like bending your wrist and then fingers to grab something. The legs also bend upon contact with the branch to absorb the shock, which in turn creates tension for the feet and toes to curl around the branch. These features allow the bot to adapt upon contact to whatever surface it interacts with.

“Finally, when we got the balance right as well,” says Lentink, “we could reliably and repeatedly perch on really complex surfaces.”

Despite undergoing 190 trials of being tossed, the bird bot saw little wear to its structural integrity, and continued to grasp the branches. Not only could the bot repeatedly do this, but it did so without much computation from the bot’s controls. Because the legs are adaptable enough to land the robot, there was no need for artificial intelligence. Lentink explained that this leaves room for flight, observation, and other motions to be programmed into the landing features if they were to be added to more complex machines in the future.

The bird-legged bot also opens up possibilities for an adaptable landing gear that can lessen the need for landing strips and helicopter pads. Other small drones can only fly for so long, but with legs like these, this tech opens the door for drones to perch while they observe, reducing their overall power use.

“If we put on our bird goggles,” says Lentink, “and we look at what the world looks like, we can land everywhere.”

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A father and son were in for a bit of a shock this past Saturday when they discovered an unlikely stowaway that had traveled with them all the way from Las Vegas to Maine. The intruder, a greater roadrunner, had spent four days in their rental van without giving itself away.

After the duo, Gary and Brian, discovered the roadrunner while unpacking, they contacted their local police department in Westbrook, Maine, who put them in touch with wildlife specialists at Avian Haven, a bird rehabilitation facility. A volunteer came to help the family wrangle the animal and safely transport it to the center, where it was fed and placed in a more temperature controlled setting. Desert-adapted roadrunners aren’t exactly suited for fall in Maine, so experts are attempting to bring the bird back to its original home. 

[Related: How to help an injured bird]

Despite the four-day van trip, the bird wasn’t too worse for wear, according to Avian Haven’s Facebook posts. The specialists did note the individual’s small size and low weight, which could indicate that it’s female, or just that it didn’t get enough nutrients for half a week. 

Of course, the usual method of travel for roadrunners isn’t in a moving vehicle—they typically zoom around on two legs, despite having the ability to fly. These creatures, found in southern desert areas as far west as California and as far east as Louisiana, can apparently reach speeds of up to 20 miles an hour on the ground. Some reports put them even faster at 26 miles per hour, which is only a mile an hour slower than superstar sprinter Usain Bolt at his peak. Plenty of animals are quick runners, like cheetahs and ostriches, but roadrunners have the benefit of a small stature, leg length, and lean muscles to help them out. The birds achieve top velocity by moving parallel to the ground and using their tails as rudders to stay aerodynamic and make quick turns.

On their natural racing grounds, greater roadrunners have to contend with coyotes, one of their primary predators. Although the popular Looney Tunes cartoon “Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner” depicts the bird beating out the mammal, coyotes can actually much run faster than roadrunners, hitting speeds above 40 miles per hour. 

For now, this hitchhiking roadrunner’s only threats are New England weather and another potential cross-country trip. Staffers at Avian Hill and the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife are working with contacts in Nevada to see if they can fly the bird to avoid another days-long car ride. Either way, the roadrunner should be happy to have the sand between its toes again.

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What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: NYC’s boiling hot radiators were designed to help fight a pandemic 

By Rachel Feltman

Anyone who lives in a city is probably familiar with the radiator problem. They hiss, they rattle, they smell kinda weird when they turn on for the season, and, most importantly, they’re really hot. In a lot of cases the only options are to physically turn the radiator off at the valve, which means having no heat, or to open your window, which feels like such a waste of the gas they’re using to keep the building warm. 

But thanks to a late-2020 tweet from director and producer Ana Breton, I have a newfound appreciation for all those dang radiators that kept me up at night and made what I can only describe as “wet marble slot machine noises” when I lived in pre-war buildings in harlem. Here’s the headline: The radiators get too hot on purpose. They were designed that way to help lower disease transmission during the 1918 influenza pandemic. 

Our understanding of viruses was new and, shall we say, incomplete in 1918. But health officials had caught wind of the fact that better ventilation and more fresh air seemed to fight off airborne diseases like the flu, and in fact had started beating this drum even back in the 1800s. That was before anyone knew what a virus was, but people who studied tuberculosis saw that it spread more in stuffy homes. So, when the 1918 influenza pandemic persisted into winter, New York City health officials asked residents to keep their windows open to help curb the spread. 

Over-powered steam radiators were considered a great way to keep homes toasty even in the open air. That’s why they’re generally placed under a window—so they can heat the fresh air as it blows in. Because a huge chunk of the available living space in NYC was built from 1900 to 1930, we still have this public health hack at our disposal. 

Meanwhile, the power source for those steam radiators switched from coal to oil to natural gas over the years, which means they’ve gotten more powerful. New windows also provide much better insulation than the panes of glass used in 1918. So, not only are our heaters designed to be used with open windows, but they’re even hotter than they were designed to be, and our apartments are now even toastier with windows shut than those 20th century engineers ever intended. 

In the years following the pandemic, engineers figured out you could cut the heat output of a radiator by around 20 percent by covering in some kind of metallic paint, and you could further reduce the output by covering with a cozy, but any new yorker will tell you that the problem is far from solved. 

FACT: Crows are probably smarter than your kid—at least in some ways

By Michael Judson Berry

I’m SO excited to present the weirdest thing I learned this week! To all of my fellow Schitt’s Creek fans out there, you know that the “crows have eyes”, but do you also know that their knowledge of basic math, water displacement, and tool making know-how rival that of a 7 year old? I first became interested in crows’ problem solving abilities when I had my tonsils out and my Mom would read me selections of The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman. I always knew the old adage “bird brain” was a total misnomer, but I didn’t realize just to what extent. Honestly, aside from a rather churlish crow named Mango, you’d be surprised at just how crafty birds can be!  

FACT: Incans were really good at brain surgery

By Sara Kiley Watson

As long as human beings have been walking around the planet, we’ve been getting into situations and fights where a head can get seriously bonked. And as anyone who has taken a tumble and hurt their noggin, the consequences can be pretty dire if the head injury is serious—and treatment has to happen pretty quickly. Before the era of modern medicine, there was a way to relieve pressure after a head injury, called trepanation. Trepanning, is, in its simplest form, drilling a hole into a live person’s head to relieve that trauma.

There has been evidence of folks scraping off layers of a live person’s literal skull for thousands of years—sometimes dating back as far as the neolithic era in Europe. And this kept going until relatively recently—as recent at least as the American Civil War. But on the battlefield in the US, people were dying left and right from issues associated with trepanning, namely infection, even though the tools to do the drilling had, in theory, improved.

In fact, trepanation’s golden age was reached years before America existed as we know it today. Skulls discovered in Peru from the Incan era and prior showed remarkable rates of recovery, up to around 80 percent compared to the Civil War’s 50 percent,  even when some patients received as many as seven holes in their heads for various ailments. The researchers who made this discovery also found that trepanation was largely used as emergency medicine, not necessarily as a spiritual practice as some had assumed. Nowadays, a neurosurgeon is probably the best person to call if you hit your head, but the practice is still used in absolute emergencies where medical care is hard to come by. But whatever you do, don’t try trepanning yourself at home, despite what some modern-day pseudoscientists have to say. 

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in Weirdo merchandise (including face masks!) from our Threadless shop.

Season 5 of The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week was recorded using the Shure MV7 podcast kit. The kit includes a Manfrotto PIXI mini tripod, so everything you need to get recording straight away is included—that’s super-helpful if you’re a creator who’s buying their first mic set up. Check it out at www.shure.com/popsci.

The post Even more proof that crows are terrifyingly smart appeared first on Popular Science.

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Nature documentaries ripe with images of bouncing birds with crazy plumage have led us to believe that animal preferences have a lot to do with natural selection. While true for many creatures, this is not really the case for monogamous zebra finches. One of the only proven preferences that female zebra finches have is for male birds that sing in the same dialect as them, meaning they have songs similar to those in the female finch’s home habitat. But in a setting where there are not that many male birds, researchers recently found that this pickiness has little effect on reproduction.  

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology simulated scenarios where female finches did not have much choice in males to understand if being picky affected the number of offspring the female finches ended up having. It turns out, the female finches remained selective and got creative: The female birds who ended up without a mate still laid plenty of eggs, but instead of taking care of them, the finches dumped them in other nests. 

“This is like a cuckoo strategy,” says Wolfgang Forstmeier, researcher in ornithology and lead author on the study published in PLOS Biology, “where females that don’t have a partner just lay eggs in the nests of other females and let their chicks be raised by them.”

To understand what the cost of this choosiness was, Forstmeier set up ten groups of twelve birds. Half of the groups had four female birds and eight male birds, allowing them to have their choice in partners. The other groups had eight female birds and four male birds, meaning that several of the birds would not end up with partners. 

The female finches have previously shown their preference for male birds with their dialect. The reasoning behind this is not entirely understood, but the songs that a bird has heard for several generations in its native environment is the one they seek out when choosing their life partner. 

[Related: Many animals climate-control their homes. Global warming could mess with that.]

The dialects are in such ratios that some of the females have plenty of choice, and others have to compete for a few,” Forstmeier said. “That is supposed to mirror the situation where many females share the same preference for a very limited resource.” 

Forstmeier expected that the female birds who had less choice in their male partners and their song dialect would have less offspring, but because of their clever egg dumping tactics, they did not lay less eggs than their counterparts in the more competitive setting and did not start laying eggs any later. Forstmeier explained that if this experiment were repeated multiple times, they could start to see a slight cost come from the choosiness of females, but not nearly as much as initially hypothesized.  

“I did the experiment to demonstrate that there are costs, and then they turned out to be much smaller than I had expected,” Forstmeier says. “The birds are actually quite pragmatic, and quite successful in handling this difficult situation of having preferences that are hard to satisfy.”

While not every species can exactly dump their eggs into another creature’s nest, this experiment is an interesting look at how animals deal with environmental stresses in unexpected ways.

Correction, 11/5/2021: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the ratio of females to males in one of the experiments in the new PLOS Biology study. The groups where not all females found a mate had eight females and four males, not four females and eight males.

The post When female finches fail to find mates, they dump their eggs and move on appeared first on Popular Science.

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The subterranean fungi known as truffles are best known as human delicacy, often sniffed out with the help of trained pigs or dogs. But it turns out these shrooms are popular outside the mammalian world, too: two common birds in Patagonia are truffle hounds in their own right, according to a new study in Current Biology. 

The researchers identified a plethora of fungal DNA in the South American birds’ feces, and found that the spores were likely still viable—in other words, the avian gourmands may help the truffles proliferate. The researchers also noticed that some of the brightly-colored fungi closely resembled local berries, perhaps as a strategy to catch the birds’ interest. 

“These are really, really common birds that are really widespread over almost the entire area where you find these southern beech forests—and yet nobody has noticed this interaction before,” says study co-author Matthew E. Smith, a mycologist at the University of Florida and curator of the fungal herbarium at the Florida Museum of Natural History. “That suggests that people should be looking at birds as dispersal agents of fungi in other systems.”  

Unlike mushrooms that sprout from the ground and shoot their spores into the air, some fungi form enclosed structures called truffles that sit under the leaf litter or in the top inch or two of soil. “The’re basically in a packet [with] a rind around the outside,” Smith says. “Those fruiting bodies are just jam-packed full with spores, and we think the main way they get around is by animals eating them.”

[Related: This fungus has over 23,000 sexes and no qualms about it]

As the spores mature, many truffles emit strong odors that attract hungry mammals. The fungi often form symbiotic relationships with tree roots, exchanging nutrients they’ve extracted from organic matter in the soil for sugars produced by the plants.

These relationships are important for the southern beech trees that dominate Patagonia’s forests. However, the sorts of ground-dwelling mammals that would typically spread truffle spores around are sparse. More common are several birds that forage on the ground, including the black-throated huet-huet and chucao tapaculo. These critters aren’t too picky about what they eat; they’ve been documented feasting on worms, slugs, and other invertebrates as well as fruits and seeds, Smith says.

While hunting for truffles for a research project on fungal diversity, Smith and his colleagues started to witness some unexpected behavior. After the researchers finished raking through the leaf litter and moved on, the birds would approach and poke through the disturbed area. One intrepid bird followed Smith around for hours. “It was interested in what I was finding in the soil,” he says. “That was weird; I had never seen anything like that before.”

Smith and his team also realized that several purple and white fruits at these sites looked so much like local truffle species that it was difficult to tell them apart. They suspected that this was no coincidence. Birds often rely on vision rather than their sense of smell to find food; a berry-like appearance could give the truffles a better shot at being consumed. 

What’s more, the researchers found what seemed to be the remains of a few fungal feasts. “We sometimes would find truffles with big peck marks in them,” Smith says. “It looked like a chicken had come along and plunged its beak into the truffle several times.”

He and his colleagues decided to investigate. They collected more than 100 fecal samples from across 700 kilometers (435 miles) in Chilean Patagonia—in some cases holding the birds in cloth bags until they pooped—and tested them for fungal DNA. Among the wealth of genetic material were 45 truffle species, including several that haven’t yet been properly described and named. 

The researchers also observed that both the black-throated huet-huet and the chucao tapaculo had fungal communities in their feces that differed from those found in the soil where they’d relieved themselves. This supports the idea that the birds help the fungi they eat disperse into new places. 

Smith and his team then examined the poop samples under a microscope to get a closer look at the truffle spores within. About 50 percent of the spores were intact after their journey through the birds’ digestive tracts, suggesting that they were still alive and could sprout anew elsewhere.

“Basically everywhere we went where we could find the birds, we found evidence that they were eating fungi,” Smith says. One member of the team even witnessed a chucao tapaculo gobbling up a truffle.  

Scientists have often assumed that birds mostly turn to fungi only if their preferred meals aren’t available, Smith says. However, the new findings suggest that, at least for these two Patagonian species, truffles regularly make it onto the menu. 

“We don’t know how much this applies to other places until people look,” Smith says. “It could be that Patagonia is quite unique in this way.” However, he says, it’s more likely that birds play an important role in spreading fungal spores in other habitats around the world. 

“The first place I’d look is other birds that are on the ground eating all sorts of things,” Smith says. “They’re probably eating truffles in those systems too and it just hasn’t been observed.”

The researchers next plan to explore how much nutritional value different truffle species offer the birds, and whether they actually prefer the fungi over grubs and other common foods. 

Bird populations in Patagonia are increasingly threatened by the fragmentation of their forest habitats, Smith and his team noted in the paper. Understanding the connections between birds, fungi, and trees will be vital for future conservation efforts, he says.

The post You’ve heard of truffle pigs. Now get ready for truffle birds. appeared first on Popular Science.

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Excerpted from A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching: Getting to Know the World’s Most Misunderstood Bird by Rosemary Mosco. Illustrated by Rosemary Mosco. Workman Publishing © 2021.

If you watch a pigeon throughout the day, you’ll see it do so much more than peck for food and crap on statues. It may dance, chase another bird, clap its wings, kiss its mate, take off almost vertically, or feed milk to its young. A pigeon is living the complex, nuanced life of a modern-day dinosaur. Here are some of the behaviors you’ll see.

How to speak pigeon

Pigeons are famous for their cooing, but why do they do it? And how else do they communicate with their pigeon pals? Read on to uncover their full repertoire, from coos and grunts to claps and whistles.

Display coo

What you’ll hear: a deep, partly trilled cooing sound that rises and then falls.

Why it happens: The display coo is all about showing off.

Even if you don’t know a ton about pigeons and doves, you probably know that they coo. And it really does sound like coo—the word “coo” is onomatopoeic. Note that not all members of the pigeon family make this sound; many do, but some produce weird quacks, chatters, and other noises. The orange dove, for example, sounds like a ticking metronome.

If you watch a pigeon coo, you’ll notice something weird. Whereas many songbirds open their beaks wide when they belt out a tune, a pigeon’s mouth stays shut the whole time. When a dove or pigeon coos, air passes through the syrinx (a vocal organ at the base of the windpipe) and builds up in that poofy expanding crop.

The display coo is a male pigeon’s song, though you’ll sometimes hear it from female pigeons, too. When a male is ready to mate, he makes this sound during the bow-coo display (see Singing and Dancing on page 162). Part of the song is a trill and part of it is more of an oo sound, though the particulars can vary. While display cooing, the male bows and spreads his tail, strutting around his potential mate. But he’s not just interested in wooing a female. He also wants to intimidate other males who might be hanging out nearby.

Advertising coo

What you’ll hear: a moaning ooh-ooh-ooh sound.

Why it happens: You’ll hear this call when a pigeon is looking for love, or when a pair is strengthening their bond at their nesting site.

If you’ve ever had pigeons nesting outside your apartment window, you know the advertising coo. It’s a really weird noise. Lacking the gentle trill of the display coo, it sounds oddly human, like a deep-voiced person going “Woo! WOO!”

Male pigeons make advertising coos when they’re ready to start a relationship. They hang out on a perch near a possible nest site and coo away until a female pigeon drops by to visit. Later, both males and females make this coo at the nesting spot. This may help reinforce their bond or encourage the male to go gather some twigs for the nest. The pair will complement the calls with a fetching display of head bobbing and delicate wing twitching.

Food call

What you’ll hear: a baby pigeon making a wheezy whistle.

Why it happens: The chick is encouraging its parents to bring it some food.

Odds are, you’ve heard this call without realizing it. Pigeon chicks can’t produce the deep-throated coos of adult birds until they’re seven to eight weeks old; instead, they make whistling, wheezing, high-pitched peeps. Once you start noticing these calls, you’ll find that there are hidden pigeon nests everywhere.

By crying out, a baby pigeon is saying, “Hey! I’m a baby, and I’m hungry! Gimme that milk!” The chick will often pair its call with urgent wing flaps. When it leaves the nest four to six weeks later, it’ll still whistle for a while to demand food or signal that it’s not a threat to nearby adults.

Wing clap

What you’ll hear: a loud slapping sound as a pigeon takes off.

Why it happens: It’s either a way to say “I just had sex” or an expression of alarm.

If you live in a city center, you’ve probably heard the clapping of startled pigeon wings echoing through the urban canyons. Pigeons make that sound on purpose. On the upswing of a flap, they slap the muscles and stiff feathers of their wingtips together. It’s sort of like holding your arms above your head and clapping with your palms turned away from each other.

Pigeons may clap when something startles them into flight, perhaps to warn other pigeons of danger or to scare an approaching predator. But there’s another big reason why pigeons make this sound: Males do it as part of a post-sex showoff display. It’s almost as if they’re applauding their own performance. We all know that guy.

Wing whistle

What you’ll hear: a high-pitched whistling sound as a pigeon flies away.

Why it happens: This whistle may help warn other pigeons of approaching danger.

If you startle a pigeon, you’ll hear a wheezy whistle as it flaps away. This isn’t because its wings are sloppily constructed or because it’s panting heavily with the exertion. The whistle is a signal that conveys valuable intel to other pigeons.

When researchers took a close look at the wingtip plumes of pigeons, they discovered a specialized region that’s less stiff and flutters in the wind. Was it the source of the whistle? To find out, scientists Robert Niese and Bret Tobalske came up with an ingenious strategy: They grabbed a can of hairspray and applied it to that feather region to stiffen it. Did this dampen the whistle sound? It sure did! Though the whistly wingtip design may come at an aerodynamic cost, it likely helps a pigeon alert its pals of a threat.

To explore this idea, researchers tried recording the wing-­whistling sounds of another type of pigeon, the crested pigeon. When they played the sounds back to the pigeons, the birds burst into the air—the whistle served as a warning. This is what it sounds like when doves fly.

Other sounds

Pigeons make a few other noises, including:

• Alarm grunt: If a potential predator (or scary human) approaches a pigeon, it’ll utter a quick grunt. It may also whack the predator with its wings.

• Stomping feet: A pigeon may intentionally stomp its feet when it lands, possibly to express its annoyance.

• Hissing and beak snapping: When danger threatens the nest, baby pigeons hiss and snap their beaks to try to
scare away the intruder.

To read on, buy A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching: Getting to Know the World’s Most Misunderstood Bird.

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