Pelican Learns To Fly With GoPro Strapped To Beak

In the popular YouTube genre of strapping GoPro cameras to animals, some videos soar more than others. For example, the viral footage of the bald eagle flying high above the mountains of Chamonix, France comes to mind.
Well, ladies and gentleman, add another one to this genre’s hall of fame. In fact, I think this great white pelican with a GoPro strapped to its beak may have just knocked the eagle off its perch.
After the pelican -- nicknamed “Big Bird” -- swam ashore after a big storm, the fine folks at Greystoke Mahale, a resort in Tanzania on Lake Tanganyika, adopted the bird. It was apparently injured and orphaned and needed to relearn how to fly. Volunteers reminded the pelican how to use its wings by running along the shore and flapping their arms.
Of course, a GoPro was on hand to give free advertising and capture the uplifting moment when Big Bird took flight, giving us a beak’s-eye view as the pelican skimmed the shore’s shallow waters and swooped back around to the beach.
However, one local — a furry, green grump who lives in a trash can — didn’t think so highly of Big Bird. The indistinguishable being, known on his street as “Oscar the Grouch,” was reportedly not impressed.

Published at DNEWS

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Windows may kill up to 988 million birds a year in the United States

Between 365 million and 988 million birds die from crashing into windows in the United States each year, according to the latest estimate.
That might equal 2 to 10 percent of the (admittedly uncertain) total bird population of the country.

The biggest share of the deaths comes not from glass massacres at skyscrapers but from occasional collisions with the nation’s many small buildings, says Scott Loss of Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. “It’s death by a million nicks.”

Low-rise buildings four to 11 stories tall account for about 56 percent of deaths in the new estimate, Loss and his colleagues report in the February Condor: Ornithological Applications. Residences that are one to three stories tall make up around 44 percent, with skyscrapers representing less than 1 percent.

Any given small building kills only a few birds each year versus the 24 expected to die annually at a single skyscraper. But the United States has about 15.1 million low-rises and 122.9 million small residences, and only about 21,000 skyscrapers. Loss applauds efforts to make skyscrapers bird-friendly, but cautions that protecting birds takes a broader effort.

Some species — many of them Neotropical migrants — appear especially vulnerable to the deceptions of windows, Loss and his colleagues find. Among the possible reasons are the risks of disorientation from artificial lights for birds on long-haul migrations at night. Compiling data from all kinds of buildings, the team found that Anna’s hummingbirds, black-throated blue warblers, ruby-throated hummingbirds, Townsend’s solitaires and golden-winged warblers topped the risk list.

Among those birds, conservationists have already flagged the golden-winged warbler because of its steep population decline in recent decades. Six other troubled species nationally also rank high in vulnerability to window crashes, including painted buntings, wood thrushes and Kentucky warblers.

It’s these already distressed species that worry Loss the most. For individual species with dwindling numbers, he imagines window kills might affect population trends.

The estimate puts windows, just behind cats, as the second-largest source of human-related menaces that kill birds directly (SN: 2/23/13, p. 14). From what Loss knows of estimates of other perils to birds such as wind turbines and vehicle kills, he says, “nothing else comes close.”

There’s no nationwide reporting of birds thumping into glass or succumbing to a paw, so estimating death tolls has long been difficult and controversial (SN: 9/21/13, p. 20). The new estimate of mortality from windows, based on statistical analysis of 23 local studies, comes close to an old estimate (100 million to 1 billion) that had been derided for its simple, back-of-the-envelope approach. “We were a little surprised,” Loss says.

There are plenty of uncertainties in extrapolating from small, diverse, local studies, particularly in trying to estimate overall species vulnerabilities, says Wayne Thogmartin of the U.S. Geological Survey in LaCrosse, Wis. But even such “imperfect science” has value, he says. For one thing, it may inspire people to start filling in gaps in data.

The total for window kills isn’t the whole story, though, says ornithologist Daniel Klem Jr. of Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa., who did the earlier calculation: “The moral imperative of preventing even one unwanted and unintended death of these utilitarian and aesthetically pleasing creatures is, or should be, compelling enough.”
Pulished at; ScienceNews

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Hummingbirds May Change Their Tunes to Attract Females

  

The male hummingbird is a dedicated suitor, returning to the same place every day for up to eight months a year to trumpet his availability–for as long as eight hours at a stretch. He’ll repeat his song two times per second, hoping for a female to heed his call.Hummingbirds’ songs are distinguished by more than just their duration; the birds are among a select group that learn their vocalizations (songbirds and parrots are the other two). Songs can vary by individual or by location, creating what scientists call “song neighborhoods” and “dialects.

”Scientists had long thought that male hummingbirds learned their song while young and then “crystallized” that melody for life.

But Marcelo Araya Salas and Timothy Wright, biologists at New Mexico State University, have recently observed some male long-billed hermit hummingbirds (Phaethornis longirostris)changing their tunes in Costa Rica, suggesting they are capable of learning new songs even later in life. (See hummingbird pictures.)

“In most cases this new song also matches those of neighbors,” says Wright, whose work is partly funded by a National Geographic Society grant. “But occasionally a male will develop a brand-new song type.” According to Wright, this marks “the first time such open-ended learning has been shown in a hummingbird.”

                                                               

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Birds avoid noise

Researchers from Boise State University in Idaho created a “phantom road” at a site in the Boise Foothills that is a stopover for migratory birds in the fall. They put up 15 speakers in Douglas fir trees and played recorded sounds of a road at intervals of four days — four days on, four days off. They then counted birds at three locations along their phantom road and three locations nearby where the road noises couldn’t be heard.
“When the noise was on,” they write, “fewer birds were present near the phantom road.” Bird abundance declined by more than a quarter near the make-believe road, and two species — thecedar waxwing and yellow warbler — almost completely avoided it. Only one species, theCassin’s finch, was more likely to be seen near the phantom road than in the quiet areas. 
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https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/wild-things/birds-avoid-sounds-roads

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