The little auks that lived in the Pacific

Fossil from Japan reveals unexpected distribution of 'Atlantic' seabirds

Date: January 21, 2020

Source: Kyoto University

Findings from a 700,000-year-old fossil bone indicate that a close relative of the most abundant seabird species in the North Atlantic, the modern dovekie, or 'little auk', used to thrive in the Pacific Ocean and Japan.

Seabirds are top predators in the marine ecosystem, and their distributions are shaped by numerous environmental factors in the ocean. As such, extensive scientific inquiries have been conducted on how seabirds respond to fluctuating oceanic environments in the ecologic and geologic timescales.

"The North Pacific has been one of the most intently investigated regions, but the fossil record of seabirds in the Pleistocene Epoch, about 2.6 to 0.01 million years ago, has been scarce," explains first author Junya Watanabe of Kyoto University's School of Science. "This has led to a frustrating lack of information in this critical time period concerning the origin of modern seabird communities."

In recent years, Watanabe and his team had been investigating seabird fossils from several locations in Chiba and Tokyo prefectures, gaining new insight on the Pleistocene seabird community in the region.

The group had been successful in identifying 17 fossils representing at least 9 species of birds: three species of ducks, a loon, an albatross, a shearwater, a cormorant, an extinct penguin-like seabird called mancalline auk, and a dovekie. Most of these species can be found in the region today; however, the presence of a dovekie was completely unexpected.

Continued

‘Gorilla Crow’ Video From Japan Is Going Viral, but Here Is Something You Should Know

VIRAL Team Latestly Jun 25, 2019 11:31 AM IST

'Gorilla Crow' (Photo Credits: @corvidresearch/ Twitter)

A video of a crow, posing like a gorilla has been going viral on the internet and people online are baffled. The moment the video first appeared on Reddit and Twitter, netizens began speculating whether it is an unusual crow. Some event doubted the authenticity of the clip. The video shows the crow, dubbed as "gorilla crow", perched on its big wings, giving it an ape-like posture of standing on its forearms. The crow soon started to appear on Instagram, Facebook and other social media platforms, terrifying internet users. But before you jump to any conclusions, here is something you should know about the mighty gorilla crow. 

According to people and various reports, the clip was shot at Parco shopping centre in Nagoya, Japan. The viral video garnered a lot of comments, with speculations behind the crow’s unusual pose. 

Watch video and read on

'Sick to my stomach': dolphin and penguins locked in derelict Japan aquarium

Anger after hundreds of fish and reptiles have been left in tiny pools amid crumbling concrete since January

Justin McCurry in Tokyo

Fri 31 Aug 2018 02.12 BSTLast modified on Sat 1 Sep 2018 03.12 BST

Anger is mounting in Japan after a dolphin, 46 penguins and hundreds of fish were found to have been abandoned for months in a derelict aquarium.

Animal rights campaigners have warned that the marine animals could die if they are not rescued from the Inubosaki marine park aquarium in the Pacific coastal town of Choshi north-east of Tokyo.

The plight of Honey, a female bottlenose dolphin, as well as scores of Humboldt penguins and hundreds of fish and reptiles, has triggered outrage following reports that they were abandoned when the facility closed seven months ago.

Images taken from outside the marine park in March this year show the solitary dolphin languishing in a tiny pool. In another photograph, dishevelled-looking penguins can be seen perched on a structure near what appear to be piles of loose concrete.

The marine park closed at the end of January following a dramatic drop in visitor numbers blamed on the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan’s north-east in March 2011.

Reports said employees of the marine park were feeding the animals, although it is unclear how they are sourcing food and how much they have left. It is possible that the park still has large stocks of frozen food or that employees are purchasing fresh fish in Choshi, a fishing port.

Animal rights campaigners have been refused entry to the facility, while local authorities have been unable to contact its private owner, Inubosaki Marine Park. Calls to the park’s owner went unanswered.

Readon  

Parasitic Birds and Parasitized Host Birds

1 Jun 2018

English Translation: Asia Club, a WBSJ Volunteer Group (YOKOYAMA Kazuko, KASE Tomoko)

“In a quiet lakeside forest
The cuckoo is calling for you,
‘It’s time to wake up,
cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, ,,,”

Most Japanese know the above song, which is sung over the melody of the worldwide popular nursery rhyme, “Incy Wincy Spider”.  I feel refreshed whenever I hum it in the morning, as it is really suitable for this pleasant season of May.  Four species of the cuckoo family come to Japan around the middle of May from South Asia, telling us that summer has come.  I would like to show you photos of three species of them, except Hodgson’s hawk-cuckoo, which I have never succeeded in photographing yet, and also introduce “Brood parasitism”, their unique breeding habit they have in common.

Brood parasitism is a habit of a bird, which does not make its own nest, lays eggs in other bird’s nest secretly and relies on the host bird to raise the chick.  To the host, the nest owner and the tentative parents to the chick, it is nothing but an annoying event.  The cuckoo family bird chooses a nest whose owner has just started laying eggs, takes away one egg of them and lays one of her own.   This egg hatches a little earlier than the other eggs of nest owner, and moreover the chick, with eyes still unopen and no feather developed yet, puts all the host’s eggs on its back and pushes them out, so that it exclusively occupies the whole nest.  Thus the chick thrives on the food its tentative parents carry for its now-dead “tentative siblings”, until it has grown much bigger that the host parents and then leaves the nest.

Continued  

Birds of a feather feed together as cranes pass food to wild heron

By NAOYUKI MORI/ Staff Writer

November 22, 2017 at 18:05 JST

HIMEJI, Hyogo Prefecture--A pair of cranes are causing amazement by feeding a wild gray heron through their enclosure by the beak, a rare sight even for experts.

The act of compassion between species at Himeji City Zoo here has drawn a crowd at weekends.

The young gray heron appears almost daily in front of the cranes’ pen around 11 a.m. when the captive birds are fed treats of mackerel.

“I have never heard of such a story,” said Hiroyuki Masatomi, an expert in Japanese crane biology.

“(Feeding) is supposed to be an act between parents and their offspring. The cranes probably treat the gray heron as a substitute.”

The female crane, Ku, and male Sho are both 30 years old, a very advanced age in human terms.

The pair previously started to pass food to another wild gray heron around summer 1993 until the bird stopped visiting them around 2011.

The gray heron that is being fed is thought to be a different individual. It started to visit the cranes in late October, and has continued to return ever since.

“We want visitors to witness this rare sight with warm eyes,” said a zookeeper.

Source  

Acoustic monitoring provides holistic picture of biodiversity

Soundscapes are allowing researchers to understand the spread and diversity of birds on Japanese island

Date:  November 6, 2017

Source:  Springer

Ecologists are using a network of "outdoor recording studios" to better monitor the subtropical Japanese island of Okinawa. Now a pilot study, in which more than 1,100 hours of birdsong were analyzed, is available in the journal Ecological Research which is the official journal of the Ecological Society of Japan and is published by Springer.

The research was led by both Nick Friedman of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan, and Samuel Ross of the University of Leeds in the UK. The soundscapes they analyzed reflect how human activity influences the occurrence of species such as the Okinawa Rail and Ruddy Kingfisher on the island.

In this acoustic monitoring study, five pilot recording sites were set up in three city parks, a forest and a forested suburb on Okinawa, which is the largest and most inhabited island in the Ryūkyū archipelago. Together with nineteen other sites, these are part of the Okinawa Environmental Observation Network Churamori Project which monitors the island's plants and animals -- many of which are either endemic or threatened.

Indices from the recordings were calculated to reflect aspects such as the composition and complexity of the soundscape. The range of frequencies of the bird song were monitored as well as different sound intensities within a recording, as an indication of the diversity of birds present in an area.

The presence of five different bird species were also automatically detected using machine learning methods. The Okinawa Rail and Ruddy Kingfisher were, for example, most often heard in forested areas. This reflects the impact that urban development is having on the location of endemic species.

The research team recorded the influence that rainy weather and seasonal changes have on birdsong and the soundscape in general. They also learned when to start listening for different bird species. The Ruddy Kingfisher's song is, for instance, almost exclusively heard during the morning, while the Jungle Crow is audible throughout the day. The Okinawa Rail is the most silent.

Read on  

Yellow-breasted Bunting at risk of extinction

17/10/2017

  

BirdLife International is pushing an action plan to save the Endangered Yellow-breasted Bunting, after unchecked hunting has pushed it to the verge of extinction in the space of just three decades.

In the mid-1990s, the observed decline of Yellow-breasted Bunting in Hokkaido, Japan, alerted conservationists that this superabundant species might be in trouble. It has suffered a huge decline, possibly as much as 95 per cent of its population, in the span of just two to three decades. Prior to 2004, this attractive seed-eater was not regarded as of conservation concern, but since 2013 it has been listed as Endangered and this year the discussion on BirdLife’s Globally Threatened Birds Forum concerned a potential further uplisting to Critically Endangered.

The species migrates in huge flocks which are hunted in massive numbers, and its plight has been worsened by improvements in communication and transportation. The species gathers in large numbers at night to roost, making the birds easy to trap in high numbers. It is known as ‘Rice Bird’ in China, where it is hunted for food; this practice has been illegal since 1997 but continues on the black market to this day. 

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The world's saddest penguin: Heartbroken bird slumps with despair after cardboard cutout of a cartoon character it had fallen in love with is put away for safekeeping at Japanese zoo

Grape-kun was pictured slumped in despair after zookeepers removed cutout

Staff are worried a typhoon at Tobu Zoo in Miyashiro, Japan could blow it away

The 20-year-old penguin began unlikely romance with the cardboard character

It comes after he was 'dumped' by a female with whom he was with for ten years

By Alexander Robertson For Mailonline

PUBLISHED: 13:09, 19 September 2017 | UPDATED: 19:41, 19 September 2017

An elderly penguin has been left heartbroken after a cardboard cutout of a cartoon character it had fallen in love with was taken away to safeguard it from a typhoon.

Grape-kun was pictured slumped in despair after keepers removed the cutout from his enclosure at Tobu Zoo, in Miyashiro, Japan amid fears it could be blown away.

The 20-year-old penguin began an unlikely romance with the cardboard character after being 'dumped' by a female with whom he was coupled with for ten years.

Grape-kun was pictured slumped in despair after zookeepers removed the cutout at Tobu Zoo, in Miyashiro, Japan amid fears it could be blown away

The 20-year-old penguin (shown) began an unlikely romance with the cardboard character after being 'dumped' by a female with whom he was coupled with for ten years

'Hululu has to evacuate because of the typhoon,' tweeted the Tobu Zoo Twitter account. 'Sorry, Grape-kun.'

Zoo staff was concerned for Grape-kun after the end of his relationship with Midori, who left him for a younger penguin.

Read more: 

Amateur collectors in Japan discover country's first and oldest fossil diving bird

August 8, 2017

During a walk near a reservoir in a small Japanese town, amateur collectors made the discovery of their lives - the first and oldest fossil bird ever identified in their country.

After sharing their mysterious find with paleontologists at Hokkaido University, brothers Masatoshi and Yasuji Kera later learned the skeletal remains were that of an iconic marine diving bird from the Late Cretaceous Period, one that is often found in the Northern Hemisphere but rarely in Asia. The remarkable specimen - which includes nine skeletal elements from one individual, including the thoracic vertebrae and the femoral bones - is being heralded as the "best preserved hesperornithiform material from Asia" and to be "the first report of the hesperorinthiforms from the eastern margin of the Eurasian Continent."

Identified as a new species, it has been named Chupkaornis keraorum - Chupka is the Ainu word used by indigenous people from Hokkaido for 'eastern,' and keraorum is named after Masatoshi and Yasuji Kera, who discovered the specimen. The bird would have lived during the time when dinosaurs roamed the land.

Read more at:

Japan is home to one third of all seabirds - so we mapped its waters

By Alex Dale, 7 Feb 2017

Japan is known for its densely-populated cities, but some of its most vital areas for bird conservation are places where humans rarely venture – its marine waters.

A nation comprised of a chain of islands, Japan is blessed with a long and rugged coastline, which is home to a particularly high diversity of seabirds within Asia. Nearly a third of all known seabird species venture into Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone, which stretches 200 nautical miles from its coastline. These species includes all three North Pacific albatrosses, eight auks and eleven petrels and shearwaters.

As seabirds are one of the most threatened groups of birds worldwide, it’s no surprise that some of these species have been assessed by BirdLife as threatened, and are in urgent need of protection. These include the Short-tailed Albatross Phoebastria albatrus, listed as Vulnerable due to its extremely small breeding range, which is limited to several Pacifici islands; Tristram's Storm-petrel Hydrobates tristrami, which is threatened by predation by rats and cats introduced to the islands it breeds on; and Japanese Murrelet Synthliboramphus wumizusume, which is threatened by human disturbance by anglers at its breeding sites and accidental capture in gillnet fisheries, among other factors.

As you can see, Japan’s seabirds already face a complex web of threats, and the concern is that the ongoing expansion of offshore wind farms in and around the country could heap yet more pressure onto the most threatened species. They are being built to meet a national need for renewable energy, one which has only grown following the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster of 2011. Clearly, there is a pressing need for Japan’s most vital marine sites to be properly monitored and protected.

However, this is currently not the case. The Japanese government has stated that 8.3% of the country’s waters are protected – but concerns have been raised about how effective this protection is for preserving the country's marine biodiversity. For example, it includes marine areas that are locally managed by fisherman and so lack legal protection, and also marine areas that are indeed protected by national laws, but don’t contribute to marine biodiversity conservation. All in all, that 8.3% is not the be all and end all when it comes to protecting Japan’s seabirds.

Continued 

Japan hatches rare penguin chicks using artificial insemination

Wednesday May 25, 2016
05:01 PM GMT+8

A Japanese aquarium said today it had hatched two Humboldt penguin chicks after using artificial insemination, the first time the technique has been successfully deployed for the vulnerable species.

The two chicks were born early April after frozen then thawed sperm from a male penguin was used to inseminate a female penguin at the Shimonoseki Marine Science Museum in Yamaguchi prefecture in western Japan.

“I was speechless when the babies were born safely thanks to the success of the artificial insemination,” Teppei Kushimoto, who is in charge of the penguins at the aquarium, told AFP.

The aquarium said it had taken four years of experiments for scientists to figure out how to collect, freeze, and correctly time the artificial insemination for the penguins.

- See more at: 

New dinosaur fossil found in Japan

Last Updated: Saturday, February 27, 2016 - 16:00

According to fossil analysis, the new creature was a small theropod that had both primitive and derived features, according to the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum. It has been named Fukuivenator paradoxus, or “paradoxical hunter of Fukui”, The Japan Times reported.

Fukuivenator is a species that existed when theropods began to evolve into birds. 

Fukuivenator “failed to become a bird”, an expert said.

Fukuivenator was about 2.5 metres long and weighed about 25 kg.

The discovery emerged from a study of some 160 fossil fragments from an animal found in August 2007 in a stratum from the Lower Cretaceous period, some 120 million years ago. Some 70 percent of its body parts were left in very good condition.

Fukuivenator, which was covered with feathers, had two-forked cervical vertebrae, which are not found in any other theropod. Its hearing was equivalent to that of birds, and the shapes of its scapula and thighbones are similar to those of the primitive Coelurosaur, from which flying animals originated.

http://zeenews.india.com/news/science/new-dinosaur-fossil-found-in-japan_1860072.html

Keeping the birds away with gel

Odorous product being tested in housing estates facing bird menace

PUBLISHED ON JUN 1, 2015 5:44 AM

BY SAMANTHA BOH

A GEL that deters birds with its smell is the new weapon being tried out against the bird nuisance in two housing estates in the west.

The herb-based product from Japan is being tested in Bukit Batok and Choa Chu Kang by the authorities here.

Along a path in Bukit Batok Avenue 1, containers of the gel have been placed above five lamp posts, which are common roosting places for birds because of their broad and flat tops.

Not too far away, another trial is being conducted at Block 755 in Choa Chu Kang North 5. Rows of containers with the gel line the ledges on the sides of the block.

- See more at:

Bryan’s Shearwater is confirmed breeding in Japan’s Ogasawara Islands

News is now in of the confirmation of breeding by the Critically Endangered shearwater with an incubating bird being discovered on Higashijima Island in the Ogasawaras, as described below by the Mainichi Japan of 25 March.

"A team of scientists has confirmed a nesting site of an endangered seabird species once thought to have gone extinct on the Ogasawara island chain, it has been learned -- the first time a nesting site of the species has ever been discovered.

The species, "Bryan's Shearwater," whose body length ranges between 27 and 30 centimeters, was believed to have gone extinct after it was last seen on Midway Atoll in 1991. Scientists conducted DNA testing on seabirds found on the Ogasawara Islands -- which have been recognized as a UNESCO world natural heritage site -- between 1997 and 2011, as their features matched those of the Bryan's Shearwater.

In 2012, it was confirmed that the birds were indeed members of the Bryan's Shearwater species. The Ministry of the Environment subsequently included the birds in the Red List as a critically endangered "IA" species.

In the latest discovery, scientists including Kazuto Kawakami, a senior researcher at the Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, went ashore on several uninhabited islands of the Ogasawaras during the night, and searched for the rare bird by observing its high-pitched cry.

Continued ...

Emergency research underway in Japan after birds found with perplexing deformities

“Something unusual occurring inside their bodies” — Never reported in 500,000 exams done before 3/11 — Now observed at every site across country, some over 1,000 km from Fukushima (PHOTO)

Asahi Shimbun, June 25, 2014: [Noboru Nakamura, a researcher at the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology] has visited the riverbed [in Fukushima] 20 times [...] looking into whether the earthquake or the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant caused abnormal changes among wild birds. [...] [Researchers] first verified abnormal change [200 kilometers from Fukushima Daiichi] in Niigata Prefecture [...] Oct. 24, 2011, a common reed bunting, a small migratory bird, was found with uneven tail feathers that had a moth-eaten appearance. The institute started emergency surveys [...] The most perplexing thing was the overly long feathers [...] Its feathers very reliably grow to a certain length [...] [Kiyoaki Ozaki, Yamashina Institute for Ornithology deputy director-general,] could not imagine a reason for them to be longer. By March 2012, the same abnormality was identified at all research sites across Japan, such as Tochigi, Ibaraki, Tokyo, Shizuoka, Shimane, Kagawa and Fukuoka [over 1,000 kilometers from Fukushima]. The proportion of birds with the abnormality was 13.8 percent. In at least one place, the ratio exceeded 25 percent. Birds born in 2011 account for 97.3 percent of the specimens with the abnormality. [...] Researchers have found feathers that already appear moth-eaten when they split open the sheath. Some birds even grew back feathers with the same deformity after the researchers plucked out older, misshapen feathers. [...] One thing is certain: The common reed [...] pass through or stop in the Tohoku region during their migration.

Continued

Recycling Tokyo Crows Build Their Nests Out of Coat Hangers

By Sumitra on April 18th, 2014 Category: Animals

Crows are known to be highly intelligent birds, and it looks like they can now teach us a thing or two about recycling and stealing. The Asian Jungle Crow, a large-billed crow, actually builds its nest out of coat hangers that it steals from people’s homes!

Crows make use of pretty much anything they find lying around to build their hardy nests. House Crows generally build crude structures, made of interlocking twigs gathered from surrounding trees and shrubs. They weave the twigs together with little pieces of metallic wire that strengthen the nest structure. In some nests, the clever crows incorporate knotted lengths of thick plastic instead.

 Present Simple

But perhaps the most amazing crow nests are the ones built around Tokyo, Japan. Twigs and other natural materials are hard to come by in the busy metropolis, so the birds settle for the next best thing, and that seems to be coat hangers. You have got to see pictures to believe it! A blogger had posted some of these images way back in 2005, after solving the mystery of the missing hangers from her back yard. But it isn’t just the one nest – it seems that Japanese Jungle Crows are compulsive collectors of hangers!

Sometimes the crows build their hanger nests on the power lines. This could cause huge power blackouts, especially during mating season. So the Kyushu Electric power company actually has ‘crow patrols’ that search for and destroy hanger nests on their power grid.

I for one am truly baffled by these hanger nests. As a person who is continually battling tangled coat hangers in my closets, I do admire these crows who managed to put such intricate structures together.

http://www.odditycentral.com/animals/recycling-tokyo-crows-build-their-nests-out-of-coat-hangers.html

Crane breeding center crowded as birds age

OKAYAMA – The Okayama Prefectural Nature Conservation Center in the town of Wake, known for having the nation’s largest population of Japanese cranes, has been wrestling with overcrowded breeding facilities as the birds age.

Officials say that the unexpected longevity of the Japanese cranes, also known as red-crowned cranes, in the center is affecting their reproductive ability.

According to the prefecture, building new breeding facilities may be difficult due to budgetary constraints.

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