This Week in Birding 78

This Week in Birding

:: The Audubon Society is looking for volunteers to monitor its three web cams on Seal Island, Maine, a National Wildlife Refuge in outer Penobscot Bay, to contribute data for a project scientists hope will help save Atlantic puffins in the state from starvation.

:: The California Clapper Rail has been renamed Ridgway’s Rail, the American Ornithologists’ Union announced recently, after a DNA examination showed that the species is more closely related to Mexico’s Aztec Rail than to its East Coast namesake, the Clapper Rail.

:: A visit to the new Wild Bird Fund Center for injured birds, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side; more about the center here, if you happen to be in the neighborhood.

:: Alaska biologist Julie Hagelin made her own bird decoy with a 3D printer, to help in her research to save the Olive-sided Flycatcher, which is mysteriously declining throughout most of its range in North America.

:: Surveys for the Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Ontario revealed an unexpected result: volunteer citizen scientists over the age of 50 weren’t as proficient as younger volunteers (those under the age of 40), when it came to detecting 13 of the 43 songbird species, and interestingly the lack of proficiency is not related to hearing loss.

:: Migrant families in Baltimore are planting flowers and shrubs in a park to feed and shelter migratory birds as part of the Patterson Park Audubon Center’s Bird Ambassadors program.

:: Actress Jane Alexander is a keen birder, talking to The New York Times about her passion.

:: Workers at the archaeological site at Gorham’s Cave, Gibraltar, where Neanderthals lived for nearly 100,000 years, have uncovered evidence of a diet more varied than originally thought — a cache of Rock Dove bones with tooth marks, cuts from stone tools, and signs of charring, perhaps created when the meat was left to roasted over a fire.

:: United Airlines working with the Houston Airport System at Bush Intercontinental Airport last month poisoned and killed hundreds of birds with Avitrol, as part of a “bird abatement project” that animal rights groups have called cruel and inhumane.

:: The US Fish & Wildlife Service postponed the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s drone testing at the US Coast Guard Training Center in Cape May from last month to November, in order to protect the threatened Piping Plovers and Red Knots that migrate to the coastal area in the summer in the summer.

Great posts in birding blogs this week:

:: From Shyloh at beakingoff: Yukon birding at Swan Lake

:: From Sarah for The EyrieWhat to Do When You Feel Under the Weather at Bird Camp

:: From Pat at Bird CanadaWelcome to Prince Edward Island Birding!

:: From Kathleen at birdworthySunrise Stakeout

:: From Laurence at Butler’s BirdsBro, Do You Even Pish???

:: From Nick at The BirdistInquiring Minds Want To Know: Answering Google Questions About Birds

:: From Kathie at Kathie’s BirdsA Summer’s Day at Reid State Park