• Animals

One Cool Thing: Border Collies Help Relocate Birds from VA Construction Project

• birds
• Chesapeake Bay
• migratory birds
• Virginia

As Chesapeake Bay Magazine recently wrote, the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel Expansion Project needs to encourage birds that used to build nests on part of the connector to move to a new site. To make sure they don’t come back, the project has brought in a pack of working dogs to get the job done–border collies […]

• People

Heroes of the Week: Stranded Conservation Research Team

• birds
• research

As CNN reported, a team of conservationists who were trying to save endangered seabirds from giant mice on one of the world’s most remote islands were recently rescued by the UK military after becoming stranded due to the coronavirus pandemic. A group of 12 researchers from the UK arrived on Gough Island, which is located […]

• Sustainability

One Green Thing: Lessons From the Garden

• birds
• clean air
• COVID-19
• garden
• trees

The pandemic has upended most of our lives, but it has also made us more aware of our environment — clean air, birds in our neighborhood, and how much we love being outdoors.  We are also appreciative more appreciative of the green spaces in and around our homes — whether it’s indoor plants, the tree […]

• Animals

One Fun Thing: Birding on the Rise

• #conservationist
• birds
• conservation
• Cornell University
• environment
• National Audubon Society
• science

COVID-19 has made us stop and notice the natural world we live in — and its been for the birds – literally!  The National Audubon Society has seen downloads of its bird identification app in March and April doubled over numbers since the same time period last year, and visits to its website are also […]

• Animals

Birds Survive Cold Winters By Adding a Feather Jacket

• #30x30
• bird bath
• bird feeder
• birds
• extinction
• feathers
• winter

Scientists have studied birds to try to understand how they stay warm during the cold winter months — the answer is a variety of strategies, including adding a “coat” of feathers, shivering, and some species, such as chickadees and bluebirds, huddle together to share heat — all things that humans do too.  But other cold-weather […]

• Animals

10 (!) New Bird Species Discovered in Indonesia

• 30 by 30
• biodiversity
• birds
• Indonesia

Discovering new species is always exciting but researchers in Indonesia have made a species discovery that’s setting records. As NatGeo reported, In the past two decades, an average of fewer than six new bird species have been described every year in the entire world. But 2020 will be different, as scientists have just announced 10 […]

• Animals

Climate Change Causing Birds to Shrink

• birds
• climate change
• migratory birds

  In September we wrote about a study that revealed that bird populations have declined nearly 30 percent — a loss of 3 billion birds — in the last fifty years. While scientists don’t quite know what’s caused this decline, new evidence shows that in addition to species decline, North American migratory bids have been […]

• Animals

Climate Change Causing a “Bird Emergency” According to National Audubon Society

• birds
• extinction
• National Audubon Society

The National Audubon Society issued an alarming entitled, Survival by Degrees: 389 Bird Species on the Brink with the group’s CEO and President, David Yarnold, saying, “[t]wo-thirds of America’s birds are threatened with extinction from climate change, but keeping global temperatures down will help up to 76 percent of them.

Why This Matters: You can see what birds in your neighborhood are threatened by using this zip-code based tool (click and scroll down) that Audubon developed.  This type of information should help people to see the importance of changing our current trajectory of climate change.

• Animals

Gone Bird Gone – Three Billion Birds Gone from North America

• alien species
• birds
• extinction
• habitat loss
• Hurricanes
• pesticides

According to a study in the Journal Science published last Friday, bird populations have declined nearly 30 percent — a loss of 3 billions birds — in the last fifty years.  The study did not look at the reasons but one of the co-authors called it a “wake up call.”  In another paper published in […]

• Animals

Sea level rise is having a big impact on coastal birds

• birds
• climate change
• ghost forests
• North Carolina
• sea level rise

When saltwater inundates coastal forests as sea levels rise, it kills salt-sensitive trees, leaving “ghost forests” of bare snags behind. A new study from North Carolina State University revealed that changes in vegetation as salt water moves further inland posed very different outcomes for different varieties of coastal bird species. Surprisingly, species of high conservation […]

• Animals

Bright Lights Kill Millions of Birds In Big Cities

• #LightsOut
• Audubon
• birds
• Fish & Wildlife Service
• light pollution
• migratory birds
• National Audubon Society

It’s spring and time for annual bird migrations, but for the more than 70 percent of U.S. birds, which are migratory, it is increasingly dangerous. A new study published last week in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment is shedding “light” on the problem that light pollution poses for the vast majority of U.S. migratory birds because they travel at night when they are much more likely to crash into buildings, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which led the study. 

• Ocean

New Study Recommends Billions for Gulf Restoration Projects

• Audubon
• birds
• BP
• Deepwater Horizon
• Gulf of Mexico
• oil spill
• restoration

The National Audubon Society published a new report yesterday calling for the largest ecosystem restoration effort ever attempted — a $1.7-billion slate of distinct restoration projects spanning the states of Mississippi, Texas, Alabama, Louisana, and Florida.  The funding for these projects is available due to the $20B settlement in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill litigation.