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SANTA FE — A California research team is conducting a five-year ecological study of six songbird species in northwestern New Mexico oil fields to see how sensory intrusions affect the birds’ survival, reproduction and general health. The Santa Fe New Mexican says the study by avian researchers from California Polytechnic State University will zero in on the specific impacts of noise and light pollution. As the human population swells and generates more light and sound, researchers are curious about how those multiplying stressors might compound the challenges of climate change in New Mexico’s San Juan Basin, the newspaper reported. Clint...

That rapidly growing wind power development kills birds in ever increasing numbers is clear. That it also kills whales and other marine mammals is becoming clear. So the policy question is how much killing is enough, before we stop killing more? This question seems not to be asked. The stampede to build huge amounts of wind power, on land and at sea, is potentially devastating to a great many species. Our focus has been on the growing threat to whales and other marine mammals from offshore industrial wind. But this is just part of a much deeper pattern of runaway...

This healthy, 1-year-old male offspring of a rose-breasted grosbeak and scarlet tanager is the first-ever documented hybrid of its kind. The two species have such divergent nesting preferences that they have been on independent evolutionary trajectories for at least 10 million years—until now. Credit: Stephen Gosser In June of 2020, Stephen Gosser, a self-described "diehard birder," was out in the woods of Western Pennsylvania when he thought he heard the song of the elusive and strikingly beautiful scarlet tanager. The blood-red bird with black wings and tail is a favorite among birders for both its beauty and rarity, as the...

Got a bird feeder? Take it down.That’s the advice of the Audubon Society, the PA Game Commission, the Wildlife Futures Program (WFP) at The University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine, and the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education (SCEE). And if you think their recommendations are for the birds, you’re right.A mysterious illness has been ravaging songbird populations in the eastern United States. Thousands of afflicted birds have been manifesting crusty discharge from swollen eyes and signs of neurologic impairment (erratic flight, trouble walking, tremors). Rehabbers are helpless; the prognosis is death.First observed in the DC area in May and...

HARRISBURG, PA - Wildlife health experts from the Wildlife Futures Program (WFP) at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine (Penn Vet) and officials from the Pennsylvania Game Commission are investigating more than 70 general public reports of songbirds that are sick or dying due to an emerging health condition that is presently unknown. As of July 1, 2021, reports from the public chronicle both adult and young birds exhibiting signs of the condition. The most common clinical symptoms include discharge and/or crusting around the eyes, eye lesions, and/or neurologic signs such as falling over or head tremors. Affected...

European judges have ordered France to outlaw the hunting of songbirds using glue sticks, a practice described by campaigners as barbaric and a threat to endangered species. French hunters argued the method was traditional and justified exemption from an EU ban introduced in 1979. Until recently, the French government had successfully sought an opt-out that allowed glue hunting in five departments in south-east France on the grounds that it was “controlled, selective and in limited quantities”. On Wednesday, the European court of justice ruled the practice was not selective and contravened EU rules. The ECJ called on France to ban...

Stephen Maciejewski dropped to a knee on a Center City sidewalk Wednesday morning and gently scooped up a yellow-billed cuckoo that had smashed into a skyscraper and died on its way to Central America or the West Indies. “This probably happened yesterday,” said Maciejewski, a 71-year-old retired social worker and volunteer for Audubon Pennsylvania. He labeled a plastic bag with the time, date, and location, tucked the slim migrator into it, and continued his rounds. Maciejewski gets emotional when he speaks about all the birds he finds, but nothing, he says, prepared him for what happened Friday. “So many birds...

EXCLUSIVE: Gambino mob heir predicts Michael Cohen will get WHACKED in prison because 'inmates love Trump and hate rats' An heir to the Gambino crime family has issued a stark warning to Michael Cohen, predicting that President Donald Trump's former personal attorney may face retaliation behind bars over his Congressional testimony. 'Inmates love Trump, and hate rats. If he wants to get out alive, he better keep his mouth shut about Trump,' Giovanni said.

Great tits use advanced syntax, including speaking in phrases, to warn their fellow birds of incoming danger, a new research reveals. This linguistic trait was previously believed to be unique to human beings.

Lights left on during a foggy night last year at a West Virginia wind farm are thought to be behind the grizzly deaths of nearly 500 songbirds. It was the third time it happened -- and each time, the federal government looked the other way. ... “The playing field is not leveled,” American Bird Conservancy spokesman Bill Johns ... All they do now is go, ‘Whoops, my bad’ and it’s forgiven.” ... The wind sector has had an exemption from prosecution under two of America’s oldest wildlife-protection laws: the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Eagle Protection Act. A violation...

From Reuters via AlertNet.org: "After I [Obama] signed the [health-care] bill, I looked around to see if there were any asteroids falling, some cracks opening up in the earth," Obama said, adding it turned out to be a nice day and "birds were chirping, folks were strolling down the mall." http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N25229523.htm _________________________________________BILL AYERS: 'Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon,' he writes (although he concedes it was really a group effort). 'The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them.' (p. 256 in the...