Hey friends, I’m working on a research project for class about the amount of parrots that get left at shelters and how educating prospective owners on the difficulties of owning a parrot may decrease this number. If you’ve owned a parrot I’d be super grateful if you could take a second to fill out this anonymous survey on your experiences with them! Thank you!
In a desperate effort to capture the bird, Polisena approved the purchase of a device which fires a net.
Hes smarter than the other two.The turkey has learned to recognise animal control officers vehicle and runs away when it approaches.
It had arrived in the town of Johnston, Rhode Island, in May, along with two other birds, and taken up residence outside town hall.
Johnstons troublesome turkey traps town worker in her car, makes another getaway, read a Providence Journal headline in August.
A look through the local newspapers shows the impact the turkey has had on life in this once quiet town.
Now, a new study
claims that mankind is also responsible for the slow decline of the
world’s largest living organism that’s still here, a massive aspen tree
network located in Utah called Pando.
Pando is an incredibly special organism,
but you’d never know it by looking. The tens of thousands of tree
clones that make up Pando are all linked by their roots, and it has
persisted for an estimated 80,000 years. It’s seen the best and worst
that planet Earth has to offer, but humans have found a way to slowly
kill it off without even realizing it.
You might assume that climate change is responsible for Pando’s decline
but that’s not the full story. Yes, if we don’t get global warming under
control it’s going to be very hard for all kinds of plants and animals
to sustain themselves, but Pando’s more immediate threat comes from mule
deer…
Mennill’s team, including researchers from the University of Windsor, University of Guelph, and Williams College, developed a new type of loudspeaker that is programmable, solar powered, light activated, and weatherproof. The speakers allowed them to broadcast adult songs with distinctive acoustic signatures for the wild sparrows over tutoring sessions that lasted for months. Over a six-year period between 2013 and 2018, they experimentally tutored five cohorts of Savannah Sparrows, from the time they hatched to adulthood.
Across the five cohorts, thirty birds produced songs that matched the broadcasted songs. Those songs differed from anything the birds would have heard otherwise. In all thirty cases, the researchers report, the birds produced songs containing phrases that had never been recorded on the island in three decades of field study.
Most East Coast folks have met a Blue Jay before, whether it was bullying other birds at their feeders or aping raptor calls and dive-bombing sparrows and robins in the canopy. Its similarly hued cousin on the West Coast, the California Scrub-Jay, is also common and only slightly less abrasive. Although most of the world’s 40 or so jay species share these feistier characteristics, the corvids can differ dramatically in color and skills from bird to bird. Here are seven more jays from across the Western Hemisphere that might not be as well-known to most U.S. residents…
Kiwis and other native birds in New Zealand are in trouble. In the 19th century, European traders and immigrants introduced many foreign rats, stoats and other animals to the South Pacific island nation. Since then, many of these non-native animals — known as invasive species — have been preying on the native birds, some of which don’t fly. New Zealand’s leaders want to get rid of the invaders. And a new technology could help. But scientists are now questioning whether that is a smart thing to do.
Kevin Esvelt is an evolutionary ecologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. An evolutionary ecologist studies the genetics of living things and how species have changed over time. “You need to be very careful,” Esvelt says. It’s always possible, he notes, that some “solution” might cause problems elsewhere in an ecosystem.
Esvelt is talking with people in New Zealand about a plan. They’re considering use of a type of gene-editing tool known as a gene drive. It can copy and paste itself into the genome of an organism. (A genome is the complete set of genetic instructions in an organism.) Once the gene drive is inside the genome, it could change the genes of some invasive species in a way that would make that species die off at sites where it doesn’t belong.
That may sound like a good thing. Indeed, many scientists hope it will be. Still, they have concerns. After all, if a gene drive “escapes,” it could kill that targeted species even in places where it does belong.
Tina Saey of Science News magazine has a doctorate degree in molecular genetics. She has covered gene editing and gene drives a lot. In an award-winning feature story in the magazine, she notes: “Researchers have designed ways to keep [gene drives] confined in the lab.” However, she adds, “no such safety nets exist for gene drives released into the wild.”
Wiping out an entire species, even if it’s a pest, raises questions about whether such a move would be the right thing to do. To date, she points out, scientists and policymakers are only just starting to think about this.
today's bird 