Frozen bird discovered in Siberia is 46,000 years old

By Hannah Sparks

February 21, 2020 | 10:27am

When miners first unearthed a bird from permafrost in Siberia, it was so well-preserved that they might have thought the poor creature had perished just the day before.

But radiocarbon dating and genetic analysis later revealed that the frozen specimen was actually a 46,000-year-old horned lark.

The bird was discovered by fossil ivory hunters near the village of Belaya Gora in northeastern Siberia. They then brought it to scientists Nicolas Dussex, Love Dalén and their team of experts at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, who confirmed the bird’s classification.

Their research was published in the journal Communications Biology on Friday.

“This finding implies that the climatic changes that took place at the end of the last Ice Age led to formation of new subspecies,” Dalén told CNN, suggesting that the icy avian corpse might be the ancestor of two of today’s lark species, including one type found in northern Russia and the other in the Mongolian steppe.

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Mysterious prehistoric ‘birdman’ costume found in Siberian grave

AN ANCIENT burial site in Siberia contained an extraordinary ritual armour made of bird beaks.

By Michael Moran / Published 29th May 2019

Siberia: Ancient ‘birdman’ discovered by archaeologists in Russia

The site is thought to be the work of the Odinov culture, who thrived in the area up to about 4,000 years ago.

But the discoveries in the ancient necropolis do not match previous artefacts from these ancient people, say puzzled archeologists.

In one grave, researchers found a pair of bronze ‘spectacles’ which are thought to be around 5,000 years old. 

Their exact use is unknown, but like the birdman costume was probably related to religious or magical rituals conducted by a shaman.

“These are unique items”Lilia Kobeleva

That’s certainly the opinion of researcher Lilia Kobeleva, from the Novosibirsk Institute of Archeology and Ethnography. She says the beaks, numbering between 30 and 50, may have been an integral part of a ritual costume or an elaborate headdress or armour.

“The beaks were assembled at the back of the skull, along the neck, as if it was a collar that protected the owner when he lived here,” she says.

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Birds migrating from Siberia to Pakistan decline 70% this winter: report

Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-11 21:45:39|Editor: xuxin

ISLAMABAD, Feb. 11 (Xinhua) -- The number of migratory birds from Siberia to Pakistan has declined 70 percent this winter, mainly due to climatic change and human activities, local reports said on Monday.

The harsh winter in Russia forces birds to leave their home in search of warmer places, and Pakistan is one of such destinations where these birds including some rare species stop by.

The migratory birds arrive in Pakistan at the end of August every year via Afghanistan, and leave in February. They all move back to their native lands by March.

Pakistan has 19 sites where birds land, 10 of which are located in south Sindh province. The migratory birds temporarily stop in Thatta, Rann of Kutch and Thar coastal areas of Sindh, from where they gradually spread to other lakes, Express Tribune reported.

Quoting World Wildlife Fund Technical advisor Moazzam Khan, the paper said that less rainfall, dried up water passages and the changing of locations are the major reasons for the decline on the guest birds.

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Flock party for rare bird

January 14, 2019 by Louis Sahagun

Hundreds of hard-core birders from across the nation have been flocking to South Los Angeles this week, hoping to catch a glimpse of a rare avian that wandered in from Siberia and inexplicably chose to hunker down within a hedge just south of the 10 Freeway.

The foreign visitor—or "vagrant," as bird-watchers say—became an instant celebrity five days ago, when a sharp-eyed librarian in Jefferson Park identified it as a red-flanked bluetail.

Ever since then, fans toting binoculars have crowded onto the grounds of UCLA's William Andrews Clark Memorial Library to marvel at the so-called megatick—a species so rare that most birders may never get the opportunity to "tick" it off their life's list of hoped-for sightings in the U.S.

Friday morning, scores of bird-lovers streamed through the library's gates and began a frenzied search for the avian superstar.

It didn't take long for Jeff Bray, 40, of Irvine to spot the treasure he was hunting for: a brownish ball of feathers roughly the size of a computer mouse who sported a white eye ring, orange sides and a bright blue tail.

"I saw it for a few seconds," Bray said with a smile. "It looked like a bird hopping around in the bushes. Very cool."

This is the first recorded instance of a red-flanked bluetail on California's mainland, said Kimball Garrett, manager of the ornithology collection at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. It is believed to be the bird's eighth documented visit to the North American continent.

The bluetail's native habitat ranges from coniferous forests in northern Asia, west through Russia to Finland. It typically winters in southeast Asia.

No other extremely rare bird, some say, has made this much commotion since an odd duck known as a Baikal teal blew into the Rocky Mountain village of Kittredge, Colo., in 1993 and planted itself outside the picture window of Bear Creek Tavern.

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Eastern curlew, a visitor from Siberia and Alaska, draws calls for help to save it from extinction

ABC Far North 

By Kristy Sexton-McGrath

Posted Thu at 3:17am

A wildlife group is calling on the Federal Government to tighten the country's environment laws to help save a bird that migrates from as far as Siberia or Alaska each year from the brink of extinction.

BirdLife Australia says eastern curlew numbers have dropped by 80 per cent over the past three decades due to the destruction of their habitat along Australia's east coast.

The bird, not to be confused with its noisy cousin the bush stone curlew, takes up residence on mud and sand flats from Cape York to Tasmania.

They are known for their long bill and legs and eerie call and use their time in the country to fatten up before making their return.

BirdLife Australia's acting head of conservation Dr Jenny Lau says the bird is already critically endangered and she fears they will become extinct in the years to come.

She said direct Government action is needed to protect Australia's coastal habitats.

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Siberian birds start to arrive in Nepal to avoid cold

Kathmandu

Jan 5, 2018-Birds of various species have started to arrive in Nepal to escape the biting cold.

President of Ornithologists Association Hem Sagar Baral said that a large number of birds have entered Nepal to escape the cold in Siberia and Tibet.

Mostly birds from Tibet travel to the warmer regions of Nepal after the plunge of temperature in Tibet.

According to Baral, some birds have come to Nepal even flying over the Mt Everest. Flocks of birds have come from Siberia.

He said birds of 150 species come to Nepal to avoid cold. Among this many species, duck species alone constitute more than 22. Over 50 species are water fowls.

It is said mostly birds started to arrive in Nepal since October and most of the migratory birds have already arrived till now to escape the harsh winter.

The largest number of such migratory birds comes to the Jagadishpur Lake in Kapilvastu district. A census conducted last year counted 20 thousand birds inhabiting the Jagdishpur Lake and around.

Baral said this year also they plan to count the number of water birds. The bird census is being carried out to know the birds' status so as to augment to the bird conservation strategy.

According to him, bird conservation is becoming challenging in the recent years because of loss of habitat and other problems in the food species of these birds. 

Published: 05-01-2018 15:10

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China’s key role in international fight to save one of rarest birds in the world from extinction

A wetland in Jiangsu province – a vital stopover for the spoon-billed sandpiper on its migration south from Siberia – needs protecting against development, one of a number of threats to a species with under 250 breeding pairs left

PUBLISHED : Saturday, 18 November, 2017, 6:18pm

UPDATED : Saturday, 18 November, 2017, 7:11pm

Ewen Mcleish

18 Nov 2017

Pavel Tomkovich spent the summer 300 kilometres below the Arctic Circle in Chukotka, an isolated coastal region of northeastern Siberia. Each day he packed hand-held flares and a pepper spray as protection against bears, and set off into the wilderness in search of a critically endangered bird – the spoon-billed sandpiper.

Tomkovich, head of the ornithological department of Moscow State University’s Zoological Museum, is part of the international Spoon-Billed Sandpiper Taskforce, involving Russia, China and a number of other countries fighting to save the species from extinction. With numbers falling from an estimated 1,000 breeding pairs at the turn of the millennium to fewer than 250 pairs in 2014, the taskforce is hoping efforts will lead to a 50 per cent increase in the population by 2025.

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Parrot fossil unearthed in Siberia

By Rebecca Morelle Science Correspondent, BBC News

26 October 2016

A parrot fossil has been unearthed in Siberia - the furthest north one of these birds has ever been found, a study reports.

A single parrot bone was discovered in the Baikal region and dates to between 16 and 18 million years ago.

It suggests that the birds, which today mainly inhabit tropical and sub-tropical regions, may once have been widespread in Eurasia.

It is also the first time a fossil parrot has been found in Asia.

The research is published in the journal Biology Letters.

The study's author Dr Nikita Zelenkov, from the Borissiak Paleontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, said he was surprised by the discovery.

"No-one before has ever found evidence of their presence in Siberia," he said. Image copyright Alexander Sizov Image caption The parrot bones were unearthed from a site in the east of Siberia

The researchers discovered the ancient parrot's remains at Tagay Bay in the east of Siberia.

It was likely a very modern-looking small bird, around the size of budgerigar. "We were excavating all kinds of animals there, and mostly they were rodents, rhinos, cats, hippos and others," said Dr Zelenkov.

"But this locality is also interesting because it preserves a rich community of fossil birds. But no exotic birds have been found there before."

Dr Zelenkov discovered part of a bone called a tarsometatarsus, which is found in the lower leg of birds. After comparing it with other species, he discovered that it belonged to a small parrot.

"Unfortunately, this find is not good enough to reconstruct the appearance or lifestyle of this parrot, but we can see that it was rather similar to modern ones. So it was likely a very modern-looking small bird, around the size of a budgerigar."

It shares features with another earlier fossil parrot bone in Germany, reported in a study published in 2010, belonging to a species called Mogontiacopsitta miocaena.

 

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Flamingos take wrong turn - and fly to snowy Siberia

By Olga Gertcyk

27 October 2015

Compass failure: aiming for the Caspian Sea, the elegant birds arrive instead on the Tom River in Kemerovo region, and in the Altai Mountains.

Local resident Pavel Shaposhnikov, 29, was in a boat with friends along the Tom river on 25 October when he spotted flamingos. 'I'm shocked,' he posted. 'We've seen flamingos on the Tom river.' Seven of the birds were spotted. Zoologist Nikolai Skalon confirmed the flamingos on their video were the real thing, saying they must have strayed from their flocks and become lost.

'The northernmost nesting of flamingos is central Kazakhstan. And these birds are listed in the Red Book of Russia. This is due to the fact that sometimes they mistakenly fly to the Kuzbass [Kemerovo region], even though they ought to be flying in the opposite direction towards the Caspian Sea. It could be they go astray during the weather changes, in the early autumn storms. Sometimes even pelicans fly to us, but mostly we can see here the flamingos.'

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State’s first bird census busts migration myths

Bokaro: Migration of Siberian birds to dams and water reservoirs in the state during winter has no bearing in reality. The myth was busted in the bird census, being conducted in Jharkhand for the first time ever. The state never served as a home to Siberian birds.

It always hosted migratory birds, which came all the way from central Asian countries like China, Tibet and Mongolia. This apart, some species also came from Kazakhstan and its neighbouring countries. More than six different species of migratory birds are seen hovering over the waterbodies these days.

"The arrival of Siberian cranes in Jharkhand during winter is nothing but a misconception among the people here. It has been found that the migratory birds coming here are largely from central Asian countries," said Satyaprakash, member of the Indian Bird Conservation Network (IBCN). This is the first time since the formation of Jharkhand that a bird census is being conducted to collect data related to migratory and other species of birds found in the state.

This will help take necessary steps related to bird conservation. The survey is named as Asian Water Bird Census (AWBC). Wetland International, a global outfit dedicated to conservation and restoration of wetland, used to conduct the bird survey every year in various countries. - See more at: http://www.nyoooz.com/news/ranchi/states-first-bird-census-busts-migration-myths/47866.html#sthash.Hcg3CQbK.dpuf

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Pink flamingos fall of people's heads in Siberia

07.11.2014

Two pink flamingos were found in two Siberian regions - in Evenkia Republic and in Tomsk region. In both cases, the birds that inhabit the territories located much further south, suffered from frostbite. The birds are alive, and experts do not lose hope for their recovery. 

One of the birds literally fell from the sky down on the head of an Evenki hunter from the town of Miriyuga, officials with the press service of the Evenki territory said. The man, Pyotr Sidorkin, was going home after hunting, when a pink flamingo fell down on the ground near him. The hunter brought the bird home, where his wife, Nadezhda, started taking care of the unusual guest. Local residents assumed that the bird suffered from cold in the last days of October, when temperatures fell to -30 below zero Centigrade. 

The family was taking very good care of the bird, as if it was their sick child. Pyotr and Nadezhda consulted the municipal department for environment to learn what to feed the bird with. "We recommended the family couple to feed the bird with mashed carrots, beets, minced fish and meat, putting all the food in a basin of water. The flamingo's appetite was quite good," the chief of the department, Ekaterina Vershinina said.

Afterwards, the bird was transported from Miryuga to Krasnoyarsk. The Kasnoyarsk Flora and Fauna Park Roev Ruchey was chosen as a new home for the bird, as specialists of the park had had experience in taking care of sick birds. 

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Migratory shorebirds could face extinction within a decade

Migrating shorebirds that travel to Australia from Siberia are under serious threat from development, which is destroying the vital feeding grounds they rely on during the epic journey.

Director of Deakin University’s Centre for Integrative Ecology Professor Marcel Klaassen, along with other researchers, is examining the migratory behaviour of shorebirds to see how they cope with changes in their environments. Their findings to date have been concerning, and reveal that there has been a dramatic drop in the number of migratory shorebirds arriving in Australia.

Alarmed by the statistics, Klaassen states, “The rate of decline among some of these bird species is such a dramatic drop in numbers as to be truly depressing. For instance, the rate of decline in numbers of one of these, the Curlew sandpiper, is a staggering 10 per cent per year which means they face extinction within a decade.’’

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Great Knots sighted at Pallikaranai marsh

Siberian migrant birds have only sporadically visited India; last sighting in city was during 1950-60

Naturalists and bird watchers celebrated this Pongal with more than usual joy, thanks to the sighting of Great Knots, Little Terns and a solitary Lesser Crested Tern at the Pallikaranai marshland.

R.J. Ranjit Daniels of Care Earth Trust, a Chennai-based biodiversity research organisation, who recorded the presence of these rare birds, said the Great Knot is a migrant bird that breeds in north-eastern Siberia.

It migrates eastwards in winter through southeast Asia, before finally getting to Australia, he said,

There are sporadic records of the species being spotted in India, while for Chennai, there is an old record in Salim Ali’s Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan, which was probably made between 1950 and 1960, judging by the date of its publication, Dr. Daniels said.

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Bird watchers catch glimpse of rare warbler that blew into Hartlepool from Siberia

THE sight of a rare bird species set bird watchers twitching when it flew off course and landed on the Headland.

Around 40 birders descended on the Borough Hall area to catch a glimpse of the yellow browed warbler.

A handful of the birds landed on the Hartlepool coast as they migrated for the winter from Siberia thousands of miles away.

Twitchers hoped even rarer birds might also follow the same course and looked in gardens through their binoculars.

Billingham birder Colin Dodsworth, 43, said: “They are rare but not mega rare. There was about five of them by the end of the day around the putting green and Borough Hall area.

“They are the flag bearers of more rare autumn migrants coming into the country.

“They breed over the summer in Siberia and migrate to South East Asia, places like India.

“They are a bit off course to be turning up in Hartlepool but you can get a weather course that blows them slightly westwards until they hit the east coast.”

Colin, who works as a gardener, thanked Headland residents for being so friendly and accommodating to the birders.

He said: “They are always so tolerant and friendly even though we are looking in their gardens. They often come out and ask what we are looking at and have a chat with us.”

http://www.hartlepoolmail.co.uk/news/local/community/bird-watchers-catch-glimpse-of-rare-warbler-that-blew-into-hartlepool-from-siberia-1-6091388