A third of Europe’s birds under threat, says most comprehensive study yet

Deteriorating natural habitats and declining wildlife populations found in wide-ranging survey of Europe’s countryside

Arthur Neslen Brussels

Thursday 14 May 2015 10.06 BSTLast modified on Thursday 14 May 201515.11 BST

One in three European birds is endangered, according to a leaked version of the most comprehensive study of Europe’s wildlife and natural habitats ever produced.

The EU State of Nature report, seen by the Guardian, paints a picture of dramatic decline among once common avian species such as the skylark and turtle dove mainly as a result of agricultural pressures, and also warns that ecosystems are struggling to cope with the impact of human activity.

The report will embolden campaigners opposed to plans by the European Commission to review two key pieces of environmental legislation - the birds and habitats directives. They act as a break on development where it threatens the natural world, but the report adds weight to the case that the laws should not be watered down.

The State of Nature report found that turtle dove populations have plunged by 90% or more since 1980 and could soon be placed on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) ‘red list’ of threatened species. Numbers of skylark and ortolan bunting, a songbird illegally hunted and eaten whole in France, have fallen by around half.

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How Do You Learn the Sex Secrets of Birds? Send in the Fembot

by Megan Gannon, News Editor | May 14, 2015 07:16am ET

Considering that most of his comrades would die without ever mating, Dick was impressive.

He once pulled off 30 copulations in a single morning, 23 of them in as many minutes. Usually coy females were enamored with him. When other males got too close, he didn't trouble himself with long, drawn-out turf wars. Instead, with a brisk thwack, Dick repelled any intruders and got back to dancing. And he danced hard, for hours on end.

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Ill-treated animals cry for help at Jatinegara

Indra Budiari, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Headlines | Tue, May 12 2015, 1:04 PM

Hundreds of people crowded the Jatinegara Bird Market in East Jakarta one afternoon over the weekend to buy pets or casually stroll around while looking at the birds and other animals.

Reno Arfan, 27, said he had come from Bekasi, West Java, with his friends to find an affordable local canary for his father. He said he had heard the market had a wide variety of birds at an affordable price.

“We found a beautiful gold canary for Rp 250,000 (US$19) from a vendor there,” he told The Jakarta Post, pointing to a vendor on the curb of a densely packed road.

Best known for its birds, the market also has various cats, fish, monkeys and other animals, which come from regions across the archipelago. Some of the vendors focus on selling just cages or animal feed rather than animals. Just a few kilometers from Jatinegara, a similar market can be found on Jl. Pramuka, also in East Jakarta.

For some people, the market is a sad sight, as many of the animals are not treated with respect.

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Language and birdsong may use the same brain structures

Presented by

Angela Saini

Birdsong is beautiful. No other animals have inspired quite so much literature and music as songbirds.

Does our love of these sweet tweets betray a deeper link between humans and birds? We are very distant relatives indeed, but could we share some fundamental aspects of language?

Charles Darwin was so struck by this thought that in 1871 he wrote in The Descent of Man: "The sounds uttered by birds offer in several aspects the nearest analogy to language, for all the members of the same species utter the same instinctive cries expressive of their emotions; and all kinds that have the power of singing exert this power instinctively."

Today, there is growing evidence that humans and birds have more in common than the simple ability to produce lots of different sounds. In fact we share brain structures and genes that are associated with speech. Some scientists now believe that birds may hold the key to a great mystery: how human language evolved.

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Massive Bird Invasions Linked to Climate Shifts

By Jenna Iacurci

May 12, 2015 12:05 PM EDT

Massive bird invasions taking place across the United States and Canada, a phenomenon that has long puzzled scientists and birdwatchers alike, is reportedly linked to climate shifts, new research indicates.

Over the years, vast numbers of birds from Canada's boreal forests have migrated hundreds-of-thousands of miles south from their usual winter range. While previous studies have blamed these so-called irruptions on food shortages, it seems that climate also plays a role. Specifically, persistent shifts in rainfall and temperature drive boom-and-bust cycles in forest seed production, which in turn drive the mass migrations of pine siskins.

"It's a chain reaction from climate to seeds to birds," atmospheric scientist and lead author Court Strong, from the University of Utah, said in a news release.

"We've known for a long time that weather was probably important, but prior analyses by ecologists have been unable to identify exactly what role weather was playing in this phenomenon," says ecologist Walt Koenig, a senior scientist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and co-author of the new study incorporating climate science. "It's a good example of the value of interdisciplinary work," added study co-author Walt Koenig.

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Tweaking the beak: Retracing the bird's beak to its dinosaur origins, in the laboratory

Date:May 12, 2015

Source:Yale University

Summary:Scientists have successfully replicated the molecular processes that led from dinosaur snouts to the first bird beaks.

Using the fossil record as a guide, a research team led by Yale paleontologist and developmental biologist Bhart-Anjan S. Bhullar and Harvard developmental biologist Arhat Abzhanov conducted the first successful reversion of a bird's skull features. The scientists replicated ancestral molecular development to transform chicken embryos in a laboratory into specimens with a snout and palate configuration similar to that of small dinosaurs such as Velociraptor and Archaeopteryx.

Just don't call them dino-chickens.

"Our goal here was to understand the molecular underpinnings of an important evolutionary transition, not to create a 'dino-chicken' simply for the sake of it," said Bhullar, lead author of the study, published online May 12 in the journal Evolution.

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Romania set to approve bird hunting during spring migration

A proposed law that would allow spring hunting and trespassing on private property in Romania could be approved Imminently, Bird Life International  has reported

This would mean birds could be legally killed during spring migration and goes against the Birds and Habitats Directives, as this is a critical time for migrating birds on their way to breed. The legislation would extend the legal hunting periods for up to 3 months, including spring migration, for 18 species of birds, mostly goose and duck species (Northern Pintail and Gargany among them). It is particularly threatening for non-target species like the endangered Red-breasted Goose, which forms mixed flocks with target species and then gets accidentally killed.

One of the other 18 species for which this law would apply is the Eurasian Skylark. It’s one of Romania`s most beloved birds and has been an inspiration for many great musicians all over the world. It is currently legal to hunt Skylark in Romania and five other EU countries - Greece, Cyprus, Italy, France and Malta. But the Skylark population in Europe has declined up to 50 percent since 1980, so extending the hunting period would only worsen the situation. Also, people are known to hunt under the guise of targeting skylark, but end up killing other species that are legally protected as well.

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