Survey estimates much higher Alberta bird populations than thought

BOB WEBER

EDMONTON, ALBERTA

THE CANADIAN PRESS

PUBLISHED JUNE 21, 2020  UPDATED JUNE 21, 2020

There may be many, many more songbirds in Alberta forests than previously thought, say University of Alberta scientists who have come up with a new way of counting them.

But researchers say that while the new counts may be good news – some estimates are more than 10 times higher – they don’t change the overall declining trend of the province’s boreal songbirds.

“Our estimates just highlight that our understanding is incomplete,” said Peter Solymos, whose paper was recently published in The Condor, the journal of the American Ornithological Society. “We need to understand the limitations.”

Bird populations across the continent have been in decline for years. A paper last fall estimated populations have dropped by three billion overall since the 1970s.

Numbers have been estimated for years using data from the Breeding Bird Survey, which uses a standard, consistent method across North America.

Solymos said that survey uses assumptions and techniques that may distort Alberta results. It sends counters out along prescribed roads, stopping at regular distances and counting birds heard and seen within a certain time. Those raw numbers are adjusted to account for factors such as birds singing more at some times of day than others.

Solymos said that may work in southern Alberta and the United States, where roads go almost everywhere. But northern Alberta is full of roadless bush. Roadside counts bias results in favour of roadside habitat.

“Roads are usually built in upland environments and go through upland vegetation. (As well), you get the disturbed habitat along the road.

“You get a nonrandom sample. You have to go into the bush.”

Solymos took the bird survey data and combined it with dozens of off-road bird surveys done over the years for forestry companies and agencies such as the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute.

Out of 81 bird species, Solymos came up with significantly higher estimates for 45 of them. Four species – crows, goldfinches and two types of sparrow – came in lower, and the rest were comparable.

Solymos came up with populations estimates that are, on average, 3.7 times higher.

Some differences are huge. The Breeding Bird Survey puts 70,000 blackpoll warblers in Alberta; Solymos reckons 1.3 million.

Jeff Wells, head of boreal conservation for the Audubon Society, calls Solymos’s work significant.

“It may show that there are more birds in the intact boreal than we thought, which is good news. It means we still have lots of chances to keep them that way.”

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Slaughter of the songbirds: the fight against France's 'barbaric' glue traps

The age of extinction

French hunters claim tradition justifies their exemption from EU rules. But with many species endangered, there is growing pressure for a ban

Kim Willsher in Provence

Sat 30 Nov 2019 12.30 GMTLast modified on Tue 3 Dec 2019 12.32 GMT

It is early morning in the heart of Provence, and somewhere behind the tall black pine trees a rousing dawn chorus begins. We are crouching out of sight among the rosemary bushes and wild asparagus listening to the melodic musical phrases of song thrushes and blackbirds.

This is Marcel Pagnol country, rich in flora and fauna and of exceptional natural beauty; but there is no sign of the singing birds anywhere in the rustling foliage, trees or sky.

Yves Verilhac, of France’s Ligue pour la Protection des Oiseaux (LPO), knows why. “The singing you can hear is from caged thrushes and blackbirds who are appellants (callers). They’re caught and kept in the dark for months so when they’re taken out into daylight they sing their hearts out and attract other birds.”

He points above the treetops where clusters of sticks attached to vertical poles glisten in the nascent sunlight. “Those are verguettes: sticks covered in glue. The callers call, other birds come, land on a verguette, and they’re stuck. The more they struggle to get away, the more they become stuck.”

The trilling Provençal songbirds are unwitting decoys to lure more birds into a death trap, he says. Once enticed, the birds are either blasted out of the sky by hunters hidden in camouflaged cabins, or find themselves stuck on the sticks.

It is a scene with which readers of Roald Dahl’s The Twits – in which the Twits coat branches with glue to catch birds to bake in a pie – will be familiar.

La chasse à la glu – glue-trapping – was banned in the EU by a 1979 bird directive, except in special circumstances where it is “controlled, selective and in limited quantities”. Since 1989, France has invoked these circumstances to permit glue-trapping in five south-east departments on the grounds that it is “traditional”.

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Songbirds sing species-specific songs

NOVEMBER 12, 2019

The generation of species-specific singing in songbirds is associated with species-specific patterns of gene activity in brain regions called song nuclei, according to a study published November 12 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Kazuhiro Wada of Hokkaido University in Japan, and colleagues. According to the authors, the findings could be a promising step toward a better understanding of the contribution of multiple genes to the evolution of behaviors.

Learning of most complex motor skills, such as birdsong and human speech, is constrained in a manner that is characteristic of each species, but the mechanisms underlying species-specific learned behaviors remain poorly understood. Songbirds acquire species-specific songs through learning, which is also thought to depend on species-specific patterns of gene activity in song nuclei—brain regions known to be specialized for vocal learning and production.

In the new study, Wada and colleagues made use of two closely related songbird species—the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) and the owl finch (Taeniopygia bichenovii)—and also the hybrid offspring of matings between these two species. This allowed them to examine the relationship between inter-species differences in gene expression and the production of species-specific song patterns.

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Genetically tailored instruction improves songbird learning

SEPTEMBER 18, 2019

by University of California, San Francisco

Some recent research suggests that educational achievement can be predicted based on differences in our genes. But does this really mean that genes set limits on an individual's academic potential? Or do these findings just reflect how standardized educational systems reward certain inborn learning styles and aptitudes at the expense of others?

A new UC San Francisco study conducted in songbirds supports the second interpretation, showing that what at first appear to be genetic constraints on birds' song learning abilities could be largely eliminated by tailoring instruction to better match the birds' inborn predispositions.

Education researchers have long advocated for tailoring classroom instruction to the specific learning styles of different students. However, carefully controlled studies showing the benefits of this approach have been inconclusive.

"Untangling the influences of genes and experience on educational achievement in humans is extremely challenging," said Michael Brainard, Ph.D., a professor of physiology and psychiatry and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator in the UCSF Center for Integrative Neuroscience. "The advantage of studying this kind of learning in songbirds is that in our experiments we can carefully control both the genetic background of individual birds and the instruction that they receive."

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These migratory birds will risk their lives for a good nap

AUGUST 19, 2019

by Cell Press

When driving across country, people can only make it so far before stopping off to rest. Likewise, most migratory songbirds must make stops during their long-distance journeys to sleep along the way. Now, researchers have evidence that songbirds tuck themselves in differently depending on just how worn out they really are.

As reported in the journal Current Biology on August 19, birds that are low on fat reserves will tuck their heads under their feathers for a deep snooze. They do so despite the fact that this more restful sleeping position slows their reaction to the sound of potential trouble. By comparison, birds in better shape stop and sleep with their head facing forward, untucked, and more alert.

"We discovered that migratory birds trade off safety for lower energy expenditure," said Leonida Fusani of the University of Vienna and University of Veterinary Medicine, Austria. "If they sleep with their head tucked in the scapular feathers, they enter a sort of deeper sleep that is associated with lower energy consumption but exposes them to a higher predation risk. Consequently, birds in good condition sacrifice some energy to sleep more safely with the head untucked, whereas birds in poor condition sacrifice vigilance to save energy while sleeping unsafely tucked in."

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Scent brings all the songbirds to the yard

AUGUST 12, 2019

by Lehigh University

"The sense of smell has been very understudied in birds, particularly songbirds, because they frequently have such impressive plumage and song variation," says Amber Rice, an evolutionary biologist at Lehigh University. "Some other recent work has documented that species of songbird can smell and prefer their species' odors, but this is the first example in currently hybridizing species that we know of." Credit: Lehigh University

Chickadees can smell! That is the news from a study out of Lehigh University, the first to document naturally hybridizing songbirds' preference for the scent of their own species.

Amber Rice, an evolutionary biologist at Lehigh, studies natural hybridization-when separate species come into contact and mate-to better understand how species originate and how existing species are maintained. The two species that make up the hybridized population she studies are the black-capped chickadee and its relative the Carolina chickadee.

Rice and Ph.D. student, Alex Van Huynh, set out to test the potential for scent to act as a mate choice cue, contributing to reproductive isolation between the black-capped and Carolina chickadees who live in the "hybrid zone" in the eastern Pennsylvania region where Lehigh is located.

Huynh and Rice found that both black-capped and Carolina chickadees produce chemically distinct natural oils. Testing both males and females of both chickadee species, they found that males and females prefer the smell of their own species over the smell of the opposite species. These preferences could be impacting hybridization. Their results have been published in an article entitled: "Conspecific olfactory preferences and interspecific divergence in odor cues in a chickadee hybrid zone" in Ecology and Evolution.

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Songbirds silenced as Colombia fights wildlife trafficking

AUGUST 14, 2019

by Joshua Goodman

In this Aug. 5, 2019 photo, canaries caught from the wild by animal traffickers sing in their cages in a quarantined area of a wildlife center before being freed in Bogota, Colombia. Songbird competitions have been a pastime throughout the Caribbean for centuries, but trapping wildlife without a license is a crime in Colombia. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia)

The metal doors of a shoebox-sized cage open up and a bird tagged #811 launches into a giant aviary. The palm-sized finch performs a midair pirouette, lands on a willow branch and curiously twitches its saffron-colored head sideways, as if surprised by its good fortune.

"That's what it feels like to be free," said Juan Camilo Panqueba, a veterinarian at a quarantine center in Colombia's high Andean capital, far from the canary's natural habitat along the humid, Caribbean coast.

The moment of liberation contrasts with the dreadful conditions in which the finch was found. Three weeks ago, police in the capital seized 32 finches in a surprise raid on a cockfighting ring where a high-stakes, booze-filled songbird contest billed as "the clash of titans" on social media was taking place.

While sparring by way of song has been a pastime throughout the Caribbean for centuries, trapping wildlife without a license—even species like these saffron finches, or Sicalis flaveola, which are not threatened—is a crime in Colombia, though one that authorities ignored in a country overrun by drug cartels, leftist guerrillas and other armed groups

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Key locations for declining songbird

Date:  June 19, 2019

Source:  American Ornithological Society Publications Office

Many of North America's migratory songbirds, which undertake awe-inspiring journeys twice a year, are declining at alarming rates. For conservation efforts to succeed, wildlife managers need to know where they go and what challenges they face during their annual migration to Latin America and back. For a new study published by The Condor: Ornithological Applications, researchers in six states assembled an unprecedented effort to track where Prothonotary Warblers that breed across the eastern U.S. go in winter -- their "migratory connectivity" -- and found that nearly the entire species depends on a relatively small area in Colombia threatened by deforestation and sociopolitical changes.

The Ohio State University's Christopher Tonra and his colleagues coordinated the deployment of 149 geolocators, tiny devices that use the timing of dawn and dusk to estimate birds' locations, on Prothonotary Warblers captured at sites across their breeding range. When the birds returned to their nesting sites the following year, the researchers were able to recover 34 devices that contained enough data for them to use. The geolocator data showed that regardless of where they bred, most of the warblers used the same two major Central American stopover sites during their migration and spent the winter in a relatively small area of northern Colombia. Additionally, many Prothonotary Warblers appeared to winter in inland areas, rather than in coastal mangrove habitat, which previous studies suggested they relied on most heavily.

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Songbirds have an unusual extra chromosome

Scientists have discovered that songbirds have an extra chromosome in their germ cells.

By Lewis White

May 9, 2019 at 7:00 pm

A new study, involving scientists from the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) in England and the Institute of Cytology and Genetics (ICG) in Russia, has found that all songbirds have an additional chromosome in their germ cells, unlike other avian species.

Somatic (or normal) cells have two copies of each chromosome, whereas germ cells (cells that become a sperm and an egg), typically have the same set of chromosomes as a somatic but only one copy of each.

The additional chromosome found in the germ cells of songbirds has been named the Germline Restricted Chromosome (GRC) and is not presented in their somatic cells.

Songbirds are the largest group of birds, meaning that nearly 6,000 of the 10,000 existing avian species have the GRC.

The GRC is transmitted to offspring from mothers and is discarded from all somatic cells of the offspring in the early stages of development. Males have the GRC but do not pass it on and it is removed from the germ cell before it becomes sperm.

The first GRC was reported in zebra finch more than 20 years ago, but it was considered a genetic oddity until this study.

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Songbird-body changes that allow migration may have human health implications

Date:  April 25, 2019

Source:  Penn State

Songbirds that pack on as much as 50 percent of their body weight before migrating and that sleep very little, exhibit altered immune system and tissue-repair function during the journey, which may hold implications for human health, according to Penn State researchers.

"Imagine if you became morbidly obese before running a marathon, you didn't sleep for a few days before competing -- and you performed so well that you win," said lead researcher Paul Bartell, associate professor of avian biology. "Then, consider that you were protected from the cardiovascular and metabolic disease that normally would result from either obesity or long-term sleep deprivation. That's the example I like to use to illustrate how amazing the changes are that occur in these birds to allow migration." Although similar changes occur in other songbirds that make their migration flights at night, the species that Bartell refers to is the white-throated sparrow. His research group, based in the College of Agricultural Sciences, studied the birds' physiological mechanisms that confer protection against the consequences of sleep deprivation while simultaneously allowing for the increased physical performance required for migration.

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Do songbirds pay a price for winter wandering?

Date: April 15, 2019

Source: American Ornithological Society Publications Office

In years when winter conditions are especially harsh, birds that depend on conifer seeds for food are sometimes forced to leave their homes in northern forests and wander far from their normal ranges to find enough to eat. A new study published in The Auk: Ornithological Advances uses citizen science data to show for the first time that these winter movements -- called "irruptions" -- lead to a decline in birds' population density in their breeding range the following summer, suggesting that irrupting birds succumb to the difficulties of avoiding predators and finding food in unfamiliar landscapes.

Many birdwatchers love irruptions, because they can temporarily bring seldom-seen boreal birds south in large numbers. However, we know very little about how these journeys into unfamiliar territory actually affect bird populations. Red-breasted Nuthatches are a useful species in which to study this, because they return to the same core breeding areas even after winters with massive irruptions, making it possible to track how their breeding populations are doing from one year to the next.

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Psychologists solve mystery of songbird learning

Date:  January 31, 2019

Source:  Cornell University

Scientists rely on animal models to gain insight into how humans learn language, but it turns out that one of their favorite models, the zebra finch, has been entirely misunderstood.

New research reveals that these birds don't simply learn their songs by imitating adults: They learn by watching their mothers' reactions to their immature songs.

In "Female Social Feedback Reveals Non-Imitative Mechanisms of Vocal Learning in Zebra Finches," published Jan. 31 in Current Biology, co-authors Michael Goldstein, associate professor of psychology, and doctoral candidate Samantha Carouso-Peck solve the mystery of why juvenile male zebra finches learn to sing better when females are around, even though the females don't sing.

The researchers found that the adult females guide juveniles' song development through specific interactions, similar to how human babies learn to talk. This study brings the number of species known to engage in socially guided vocal learning to four: zebra finches, humans, marmosets and cowbirds.

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Robin hushed: Wind turbines are making songbirds change their tune

December 21, 2018 by Mark Whittingham, The Conversation

Wind turbines are a leading source of green energy which could supply 12% of the world's energy by 2020. But their use is often criticised for its impact on wildlife, particularly birds. Larger birds can collide with turbines and some have even learned to avoid flying near them.

Impacts on smaller birds are less well documented as they tend to manoeuvre around turbines and can avoid impacting with them much more easily than larger species. My own research showed that birds associated with farmland, including a range of songbirds, were generally unfazed – their winter distribution didn't change in the presence of turbines.

But there were also some intriguing patterns in the behaviour of skylarks in early spring. We noticed their numbers were generally lower close to turbines. I wondered then whether the noise emitted by the turbines might be responsible.

Wind turbines and songbird communication

Much of the evidence for how wind turbines affect birds concerns their distribution patterns around turbines, but we know little about why birds choose to avoid them. The robin, a widespread small bird which lives in rural areas where turbines are common, seemed a perfect candidate to investigate.

Robins are an aggressive but popular species in the UK, having recently been voted the nation's favourite bird. Males are territorial beyond proportion to their diminutive size. Nevertheless, we subjected territorial male robins to one of three treatments – another robin's song, a robin's song with wind turbine noise, and wind turbine noise alone – via a sound recording device inside their territory.

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Huge shipment of illegally killed birds seized in Slovenia

 14/11/2018

Slovenian customs officers have discovered an astonishing 1,349 dead songbirds on a bus heading for Italy, where they were to be eaten in restaurants.

The illegally killed birds included 13 protected species, with 1,028 Red-throated Pipits, 209 White Wagtails, 73 Meadow Pipits, 16 Tree Pipits and 10 Eurasian Skylarks discovered in the 15 boxes seized last month. The vehicle was coming from Romania, and officials have ascertained that they were destined for the Italian black market that distributes such birds to restaurants for use as a 'luxury' dish.

Such dishes are available for a limited time each year – mainly during the autumn migration period – and other species discovered in this latest batch included European Goldfinch, Swallow, European Greenfinch, Common Quail, Willow Warbler, Western Yellow Wagtail, Corn Bunting and Reed Bunting.

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Couples showing off: Songbirds are more passionate in front of an audience

Date:  October 3, 2018

Source:  Hokkaido University

Both sexes of a songbird called the blue-capped cordon-bleu intensify courtship performances that involve singing and dancing in the presence of an audience, especially if it is a member of the opposite sex, an international team of researchers has discovered.

Mutual courtship displays have generally been understood as a form of private communication between a male and a female, and many researchers have focused on this aspect. The cordon-bleu is a socially monogamous songbird found in Africa. In its courtship display, both sexes sing and sometimes add a unique dance that resembles tap dancing.

Birds that live in flocks like cordon-bleus are thought to carry out courtship communications in the presence of other birds. However, very little research has been conducted on whether the individuals performing courtship displays are influenced by the presence of other birds. In the present study published in Science Advances, researchers from Hokkaido University in Japan and the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen, Germany, focused on this so-called audience effect.

In the experiment, the researchers placed paired couples in situations with and without an audience and observed their behavior.

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Indonesia gives in to bird traders, rescinds protection for 3 species

by Basten Gokkon on 7 September 2018

The Indonesian government has removed three popular songbirds from its newly updated list of protected species. They are the white-rumped shama, straw-headed bulbul and Javan pied starling — a critically endangered species.

The move comes amid protests from songbird owners and breeders, who have raised concerns about loss of livelihoods.

The owners and breeders now say they will push for more species to be removed from the list.

Conservationists and scientists have blasted the ministry for backing down and called into question its assessment that protecting the three species would have had an adverse economic impact.

JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has dropped three popular songbirds from a new list of protected species, amid pressure from owners and breeders.

The white-rumped shama (Kittacincla malabarica), the Javan pied starling (Gracupica jalla) and the straw-headed bulbul (Pycnonotus zeylanicus) — the latter two of which are listed as threatened on the IUCN Red List — will no longer be protected from captive breeding and trading by private owners.

The three were among 562 bird species named in a sweeping update of the government’s list of protected species, out of a total of 919 species. The announcement in June of the update, the first in nearly two decades, was met with protests by songbird owners and breeders. They argued that the ban on buying and selling commonly traded songbirds lacked scientific and cultural bases. They also said several species included in the update were currently bred on a large scale, and were far from endangered.

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Original habitat is best, but restoration still makes a big difference

Date:  June 13, 2018

Source:  American Ornithological Society Publications Office

A new study in The Condor: Ornithological Applications presents some of the best evidence to date that restoration efforts in Missouri's Ozark Highlands make a difference for nesting songbirds that breed there. Recent studies support that these efforts are making a positive impact on the ecosystem and increasing the survival of bird species that breed there.

A new study in The Condor: Ornithological Applications presents some of the best evidence to date that restoration efforts in Missouri's Ozark Highlands make a difference for nesting songbirds that breed there. The reduction of Missouri pine savannah and woodland areas has caused birds that rely on these habitats to decline. Current efforts to bring these habitats back are under way and include prescribed fire and thinning tree stands. Recent studies support that these efforts are making a positive impact on the ecosystem and increasing the survival of bird species that breed there.

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Connect with Conservation: Malta bird massacre

Steve Allain, our resident conservationist, turns his attention to the threats to songbirds.

By Steve Allain

Friday, 25th May 2018

If there is one group of birds you have probably noticed declining in the British countryside over the past few years, it is the songbirds. Songbirds are a large group of birds, which, as their name suggests, like to sing, filling the landscapes they inhabit with the beautiful sound of bird songs. There is a number of reasons for their decline in recent times, such as the loss of habitats and the use of pesticides, which has reduced the amount of prey available in an area. One factor which you may not be aware of, however, is that of hunting. Every spring and autumn on the islands of Malta there is a hunt, in which thousands of migrating birds are shot over the Mediterranean islands. This is not the only place where songbirds are at risk: a large number of species have disappeared from the wild in south-east Asia, where birds have been collected to supply the pet trade.

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Some 500,000 wild song birds illegally removed from Ukraine in past 10 years - expert

KYIV. May 17 (Interfax-Ukraine) – An organized criminal group consisting of foreigners of Arabic origin who smuggled around 500,000 wild song birds from the country in the past 10 years, in particular, goldfinches, tits, redpolls, bullfinches and siskins, Director of the Kyiv Ecological and Cultural Center Volodymyr Boreiko has said.

"According to our information, this group organized by the Arabs has been operating in Ukraine for about 10 years. They took out about 0.5 million wild song birds by air. This is only smuggled, and during the bird catching and transportation tens of times more are killed. Damage in $ 2.5 million has been caused to Ukraine," he said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Wednesday.

Boreiko also said that only in 2017 from the Zhuliany airport to Lebanon and Oman 26,950 goldfinches were exported in twenty batches.

According to the ecologist, the Arabs pay UAH 50 for one bird to Ukrainian bird catchers, in Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates they get EUR 50-70 for one bird.

"In these countries, goldfinches are used as singers, or they are eaten. They make pate from their tongues, which is considered a great delicacy," he said.

Boreiko said that in this situation the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine, which should issue permits for the export of birds, has never issued this kind of permits in 10 years.

"That is, no one applies to them for permits. They do not issue permits, but millions of birds pass through our customs officers. The latter simply are not interested in whether there are documents for exported birds. Veterinarians issue veterinary certificates without specifying who the true owner of these birds is," he said.

According to him, in order to stop the smuggling of wild song birds from Ukraine, it is necessary that the minister of natural resources issued an order for the ecological inspection to ensure that these birds were not allowed to be exported without separate permits.

Source

Genes in songbirds hold clues about human speech disorders

Date:  March 28, 2018

Source:  University of California - Los Angeles

Summary:

Insights into how songbirds learn to sing provide promising clues about human speech disorders and may lead to new ways of treating them, according to new research published in the journal eLife.

There are about 9,000 species of birds, about half of which are songbirds. When these birds sing, the activity of a master gene called FoxP2 declines in a key region of the brain involved in vocal control known as Area X. The decrease in FoxP2 produces changes in the activity of thousands of other genes.

FoxP2 also plays an important role in speech in humans. Stephanie White, a UCLA professor of integrative biology and physiology and senior author of the study, thinks FoxP2 and the changes it causes could be a part of the molecular basis for vocal learning. In both humans and birds, cells process this gene in a way that produces both a full-length protein and a shorter version of the protein. The long version regulates other genes; what the short version does remains a mystery. Humans with a mutation in the long version have problems with their speech.

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