More than 60 baby seagulls found dead, injured in South Loop ‘bird chaos’

06/18/2018, 07:25pm

About 40 dead and 25 injured baby seagulls were found and rescued from South Jefferson Street on Sunday in what seems to be the result of attacks between seagulls.

The Chicago Birds Collision Monitors, which works under the Chicago Audubon Society, received a phone call through its hotline about 2 p.m. When volunteer Chava Sonnier arrived at the scene on her way home, expecting to pick up just one or a few birds, she was “totally shocked.”

“I’ve personally never seen anything of this large a scale before,” she said. “It was truly bird chaos.”

Sonnier rescued about 20 injured seagulls from a sea of eggs, birds and feathers. It was “heartbreaking,” she said, to see surviving birds curled up near their dead siblings or trying to remain with family members.

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Hope for ‘extinct’ bird

Sunday 17 Jun, 2018 | By Danielle Butler newsdesk@thewanakasun.co.nz

More than 100 reported sightings of the elusive South Island Kokako have given the Trust working to prove its existence hope that it is coming close.

The South Island Kokako Charitable Trust launched a search for the bird, once thought to be extinct, in January 2017, offering $10,000 to anyone who could provide credible evidence of the bird’s existence.

Potential sightings have been recorded from as nearby as Lake Hawea, although the Trust said that it was focusing its interest to the South of Reefton on the West Coast and the Granville Forest.

Trustee Ron Nilsson said, “We still need definitive evidence, a photo or video, but we really feel that we are getting closer with the help of so many people who are out walking, tramping or hunting and know what to look and listen for.

“We are very optimistic that proof will be found soon.”

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RSPB urges Oxford residents to help boost ailing swift population

16th June

Pete Hughes

BIRD lovers are being encouraged to take steps to try and boost Oxford’s ailing swift population.

The bird – known as a ‘master of the sky’ – has seen numbers decline by more than half between 1995 and 2015.

For swift awareness week, which starts today, the RSPB is urging residents to help boost the food and nesting options available for the bird in a bid to make the city more habitable.

Emily Seccombe, Oxford Swift City project officer, said people can help by putting up a nestbox or growing wildflowers to attract flying insects - a swift’s main source of food.

She added: “Swifts are urban nesting birds; they make their nests in the cracks and crevices under tiles or in stonework.

“A major cause of swifts’ decline is the loss of nest spaces in buildings, due to demolition or renovation of old buildings.

“Modern buildings often lack the spaces that swifts need.”

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The top five threats to birds may surprise you

13 Jun 2018

One in eight bird species is in danger of extinction – but what are the main factors driving their decline? They might not be what you think. Read about the five biggest threats to bird biodiversity, and what’s being done to combat them.

By Margaret Sessa-Hawkins

Sometimes it’s easy to see what’s harming birds – especially if it’s in your backyard. The cat with a bird between its teeth, or the tragic pile of feathers by the side of the motorway. But the bigger threats are less visual, and less direct.

This doesn’t make them any less urgent. Our latest report, State of the World’s Birds 2018, found that one in eight birds is in danger of extinction, and 40% of the world’s 10,000+ species are declining. Worryingly, the birds in danger now include familiar species such as the Atlantic Puffin Fratercula arctica, Snowy Owl Bubo scandiacus and European Turtle-dove Streptopelia turtur. The chief driving forces are, as the paper’s editor-in-chief Tris Allinson said, “invariably of humanity’s making”. But that also means we can strive to reverse them.

1. Industrial Farming

Crop pesticides are poison to the White-crowned Sparrow © Tim Lenz

The problem: More than a third of the earth’s land surface is dedicated to agriculture. We often think of farmland as an idyllic, natural landscape; but the expansion and intensification of farming impacts a massive 74% of globally threatened birds. Not only does it destroy much-needed habitats, especially in tropical regions, but some pesticides are poisonous to birds. A recent study from the USA found that migrating White-crowned Sparrows Zonotrichia leucophrys exposed to a class of pesticide known as neonicotinoids lost a quarter of their body mass and fat stores.

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Every dead bird analysed by RSPB contained a ‘lunchbox full of plastic’

by Calum Ross

 June 11, 2018, 6:42 am

The study has caused some concern.

Two tonnes of plastic have been found in the stomachs of fulmar birds around the North Sea.

Helen Moncrieff, Shetland manager at RSPB Scotland, said every single dead bird they analysed as part of a study contained a “lunchbox full of plastic”.

She was speaking ahead of a summit in Oban next week on tackling marine litter, which will be hosted by Environment Secretary Roseanna Cunningham.

Scotland is home to a third of the European Union’s breeding seabirds, with the islands having traditionally hosted huge colonies.

However, concerns about the impact of plastic pollution are growing, and climate change has been blamed for a catastrophic collapse in seabird numbers.

Speaking at a fringe event at the SNP conference in Aberdeen, Ms Momcrieff said: “The mallies (fulmars), there is a long-term study going on in the north Atlantic and the North Sea particularly, with a whole lot of countries involved.

“Every month we go out and we check, do a beach bird survey, and any fulmar or mallie we find intact we take it, stick it in the freezer and then the stomach contents are analysed later on.

“What we find is there’s plastic in every single mallie’s belly.

“It’s like having a lunchbox full of plastic in your stomach. We calculated that there’s around two tonnes of plastic in fulmar bellies alone.”

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Missing bird who flies Adelaide-Arctic route spotted in China

HE was gone for three years — but not forgotten. South Australians feared their favourite feathered friend had perished after he dropped off the radar until this photo emerged.

The AdvertiserJUNE 19, 201810:27PM

HE’S back! Go-Go Godwit, South Australia’s premier frequent flyer, has been sighted in China after fans feared he may have flown into the sunset.

The male Bar-tailed godwit regularly spends summer at Thompson Beach, north of Adelaide, where he was tagged by volunteers in 2012 and leaves in autumn on an incredible journey north to breeding grounds in the Arctic Circle.

The annual migratory journey these birds take from Adelaide to the Arctic via China involves a round trip of around 26,000km.

Given that godwits can live for up to 30 years, a bird could fly up to 800,000km in migratory journeys during its life, about the same as a return trip to the moon.

Go-Go, more formally known as AKK due to the identification tag on his leg, was last seen in China in 2015 when The Advertiser reported his progress.

Since then he fell off the radar, leading to fears he had died or been killed.

However. after three years missing in action the plucky traveller has been spotted at Nanpu on Bohai Bay in China where wildlife photographer Adrian Boyle took a mobile phone photo through a telescope to confirm his unique yellow tag.

The reappearance of the long-distance local has overjoyed local shorebird watchers who are well aware of the toll exhaustion, hunting and habitat loss takes on the thousands of birds who leave each year from Gulf St Vincent beaches on their epic flight.

Adrian Boyle, originally from Millicent, has been a regular visitor to Bohai Bay to count and scan the mudflats for flagged birds. He is part of the Global Flyway Network, a partnership between researchers worldwide devoted to the long term study of long distance migrating shorebirds.

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ODFW declines murrelet listing change

Seabird to remain a threatened species

The population of marbled murrelets, a seabird listed as a threatened species, is considered to be faring well enough to avoid the “endangered” species status.

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) in February initially voted to list the bird as endangered, but the chair of the board was absent. Upon his return this week, the board voted 4-2 against “up-listing” the bird.

State Rep. David Brock Smith, R-Port Orford, was the last to speak at the ODFW meeting this week in opposition to the uplisting.

“It appears that the Oregon population may now be fluctuating around a new, lower baseline,” a January ODFW status report reads. “Based on this monitoring program, the Oregon population was estimated at 10,975 birds in 2015 and was likely somewhere between 8,188 and 13,762 birds. The fairly wide confidence limits for these population estimates reflect the challenges of monitoring a highly mobile seabird that is sparsely distributed.”

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