News: About Birds

[birdcamfan]

Wow! I'm embarrassed to be human!

[RCF]

Migrating Whooping Crane fatally shot April 20th 2012

An adult whooping crane that spent the winter in Texas was shot in a South Dakota cornfield before it could reach the endangered birds' breeding grounds in Canada, federal wildlife officials said.

http://www.caller.com/news/2012/apr/24/migrating-whooping-crane-is-fatally-shot-in/

[The Peregrine Chick]

Hundreds of Threatened Species Not On Official U.S. List, Research Shows

ScienceDaily (Dec. 12, 2011)

Many of the animal species at risk of extinction in the United States have not made it onto the country's official Endangered Species Act (ESA) list, according to new research from the University of Adelaide.

National "red lists" are used by many countries to evaluate and protect locally threatened species. The ESA is one of the best known national lists and arguably the world's most effective biodiversity protection law.

A study -- now published in the latest issue of Conservation Letters -- has compared the ESA list of endangered species with the world's leading threatened species list, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.

The study has found that of the American species included on the IUCN Red List, 40% of birds, 50% of mammals, and 80-95% of other species such as amphibians, gastropods, crustaceans, and insects, were not recognised by the ESA as threatened.

This amounts to approximately 531 American species on the IUCN Red List that have not made the ESA protection list. These include bird species such as the critically endangered Kittlitz's murrelet (Brachyramphus brevirostris), the endangered ashy storm-petrel (Oceanodroma homochroa), and the vulnerable cerulean warbler (Dendroica cerulea).

"The ESA has protected species since its establishment in 1973, and it may have prevented 227 extinctions. However, the implementation of the ESA by successive US governments has been problematic, including poor coverage of imperilled species, inadequate funding, and political intervention," says study leader Bert Harris, a native of Alabama who is undertaking his PhD with the University of Adelaide's Environment Institute and School of Earth & Environmental Sciences.

"Vague definitions of 'endangered' and 'threatened' and the existence of a 'warranted but precluded' category on the ESA list are also contributing to the gap in species classification," he says.

Mr Harris says a detailed evaluation of the ESA's coverage of the IUCN Red List was "well overdue."

"The ESA is a powerful environmental law but its impact is limited. With many species being overlooked, this does not bode well for the ESA's ability to mitigate species decline before they become critically imperilled.

"The IUCN Red List is imperfect, but it is the leading global threatened species list. It involves collaboration of many scientists, and regular refinement of its categories and criteria," Mr Harris says.

The study was conducted in collaboration with the University of California, Santa Cruz, the National University of Singapore and the University of Göttingen, Germany.


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111212132632.htm

[Kinderchick]

And she's beautiful for an old bird!

Yes, she is very beautiful looking!

[bcbird]

Oldest recorded wild bird raising a chick


this one is courtesy of Loriann

Thanks, Loriann!!

[birdcamfan]

And she's beautiful for an old bird!

[Kinderchick]

WOW!  

[The Peregrine Chick]

Oldest recorded wild bird raising a chick


Wisdom, a 60-year-old+ Laysan albatross.
John Klavitter , U.S. Fish &Wildlife Service

Wisdom, a Laysan albatross at least six decades into her life, has startled federal biologists by raising a chick.

Nestled amid other hatchling's nests, the chick turned up in a February survey at the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the Pacific Islands, report U.S. Geological Survey and Fish and Wildlife Service scientists.

Wisdom "has sported and worn out 5 bird bands since she was first banded by USGS scientist Chandler Robbins in 1956 as she incubated an egg," says a statement. That means the albatross is at least 60, since the species first lays eggs at five.

"Just the idea of a bird 60 years old or more still bearing young is amazing," said Bruce Peterjohn of the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Md., by phone. Only one other wild bird, an albatross of another species, is known to have lived to 61. Wisdom will tie that bird's record if she lives another year, says Peterjohn. "Most Laysan albatrosses live to 30 or 40, just to make it to 60 is pretty incredible."

Since 1920 U.S. and Canadian scientists have banded about 64.5 million birds and recovered bands from about 4.5 million of them. One irony of Wisdom's story is that Robbins, who originally banded the bird in 1956, also rebanded her in 2003. Robbins is in retirement but still works with USGS biologists in the bird banding program. "He is very proud of this bird, as you can imagine," Peterjohn says.

Central to Samuel Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" poem, the albatross is known as a soaring seabird, famed for its broad wingspan. They breed on Pacific islands such as Midway. According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, 19 of 21 albatross species are threatened with extinction, including the Laysan albatross, largely from pollution and predation by rats and other pests that prey on their young.

Although albatrosses mates for life, "I suspect she has gone through a few mates," Peterjohn says. The chick noted in the February survey is still healthy, he reports, and will likely stay on Midway until June or July. Young Laysan albatrosses live at sea for the first two to three years of their flying life.

"Albatrosses are indeed among the longest-lived birds in the world. Researchers had speculated that they could live this long, but what is really remarkable is that they not only can live this long, but still successfully reproduce. Particularly for a female which typically bears more of the reproductive cost than a male," says wildlife biologist Lindsay Young of Pacific Rim Conservation in Honolulu. "It is also amazing that we know the age of this bird because of banding efforts that went on decades ago, and that the same individual was found almost 60 years later amongst literally millions of other birds breeding on the island. It really is a needle in a haystack. It makes you wonder how many other birds live this long, but we just don't get to find out either because we don't actively monitor them, or because we can't find the older individuals."

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2011/03/oldest-recorded-wild-bird-bears-chick-wisdom-albatross-midway/1


this one is courtesy of Loriann